II: She Loves Us
by The Toa of Science Fiction
Summary: Shortly after being pulled from Net Station on Jakku, Rey finds herself thrown headfirst into a world unlike anything she's ever seen before. Both the Empire and the First Order gather more power and pose greater threats to each other and the New Republic. And a voice - calling from the void, telling Rey of an unseen world. Brutality, vulgarity, war elements, you've been warned.
1. Jakku: Oh Nar, You Don't!

_"She sees her children fighting_

_Soothes with gentle smile_

_Catches them in embracing arms_

_Laughing all the while"_

* * *

The signal from Net Station was seen by the whole universe.

That happened to include two First Order defectors who, not long before, had been seconds from Infinity. They were still trapped on all sides by the 233rd in the extended box canyon when the element of surprise came to their rescue.

The AT-AW perched somewhere over their heads followed the new source of blasterfire. Good thing, too. Finn could feel the barrel of his blaster threatening to overheat. He could also take the moment to help Poe to his feet. The gray spike through his shoulder almost seemed decorative by this point, the blood on it like red war paint. He could see his partner flexing the fingers of the hand with what must've been a ridiculous pain tolerance.

More blasterfire.

"Stay here," Finn ordered to Poe, who at this point was too tired and close to fading to protest. Seeing that the muzzle no longer glowed orange, he trusted the blaster not to blow up in his hands. He found the energy to leap over several rocks and bolt to one of the Order speeders. He saw now the multicolored exchange between Terries - Poe's word still rang in his mind - and something high up the canyon wall.

He decided to close in from the rear. Not the greatest strategy, but anything for these newfound allies. Thankfully, they held the high ground, and the Terries' full attention. He managed to climb on top of Phasma's speeder.

Phasma: **"Wipe them out! Leave nothing of them!"**

Wordlessly, the brill that was once FN-2187 began firing at the 223rd from behind.

Immediately, a portion of the blasterfire went in his direction. His ears were bleeding, his whole body was six steps from numbness, and he'd never done real combat like this before, but he thought of none of these things, he just fired. And he shared the soldiers' accuracy.

The AW noticed him. Patrolman Skorr was turning the turret when something dropped onto the hull.

He didn't have time to shout an order before the gunfire got a lot closer to him.

All at once it was in the walker. He heard the secondary engineer yell, start reaching for his blaster.

A high, impish, definitely alien voice: "Ah, _nar_, you don't!" Yells. Thuds. Some kind of war cry which, when translated literally, would make a listener afraid for their genitals.

Skorr left his seat, barely had time to grab his own pistol before taking a varactyl prod to the face. He hit the windscreen with not an ounce of consciousness left in him. His ridemates joined him.

That left the Teedos to examine their handiwork.

"Cockpit's tilted. See about bring us up," Speaking Teedo asked. The other's thoughts found their way into his mind, no words capable of really translating them.

The mechanics were unlike anything he - nor _Silension_ \- had seen before. But they would learn quickly. It had a fixed number of motion points, that much one could deduce from the exterior.

On impulse, he fiddled with a circular toggle, scowling a Teedo grin as it adjusted the turret. Following Wiles' cannonfire, he found his target.

Another impulse, and the whole walker jumped in place as half of the black-clad soldiers disintegrated. _This system isn't so bad after all._ He felt Silension expressing a similar thought.

He also saw Finn, who turned briefly to see the shot they'd fired. Then he turned back to the Terries left: Phasma and hardly a dozen others. At least two of them had taken knocks to the stallers and visils; he could see their faces.

These were people, too.

No, they were just more dirty Terries. He picked up his fire, focusing it on the silver-clad Captain. His blasts seemed to bounce off-roll off like water, more like. It did get her attention, however.

"Hey!" he shouted with what vocal strength he could muster: not much. "Over here, ya waste of propaganda!" Phasma had her blaster in hand. Without much thought, she raised it to Finn's face.

Another blaster fired first. A big one. Cartoonishly, she was yanked off her feet and dragged easily fifteen meters through the air. He wished she stayed alive long enough to bash her head in two, mutter a short cavebrill grunt, and exhale her last breath like the closing frame of one of the holos.

After a moment he sighed with relief. And then he was laughing. He saw the AW climbing backwards up the wall. He whooped to them-at least until remembering that his friend had a rock spike in his shoulder just as long as he was tall.

"Hey!" he shouted again, this time with very different intent. "My friend! He's hurt, bad!" The turret tilted itself to him like a human head. He pointed with both arms.

From behind, in the now silent canyon, Finn heard climbing cables. Zipping of harnesses. He saw a grey-skinned figure descend. And a pink one after that. He would deal with them in a moment; he needed to get back to Poe.

He was exactly as Finn had left him, albeit drained beyond anything he'd ever seen before. His head rolled back and his breathing was unsteady.

Quietly: "You'll… want to leave it in, won't you? Drag me back to a... bacta pool on a cart, huh."

"If that's what it takes." The spike had broken off and Poe had already proven he could move, at least. "I think these bri are here to help."

"That'd be a first." His eyes came into focus over Finn's shoulder. He turned to look around.

A pudgy, pink-skinned giant approached. He appeared unarmed, but both former Order members had seen the horrors an unarmed creature can produce.

A sub-contrabass voice issued between globular lips. Three-fingered hands were raised in the universal gesture for 'don't shoot, I'm unarmed - at least, I want you to think I am'.

"You both need medical attention. And we need something from you."

"And what's that?" Finn asked.

"Help."

"With?"

"Finding someone. You're pilots, right?" _No. But then again, those are their terms, it seems. Besides, we've both been trained to fly, right?_

"We'll do it. Can you help my friend up?" The grey-skinned one - tall, with a whole third arm in the center of his chest - was rapidly moving in their direction. In a voice like electrically charged silk, he said this:

"Allow me to carry him. More arms means greater lifting. I'll be gentle about it." Finn took a couple steps back to let the alien do his thing. Part of him was disgusted at the creature; another part was simply curious, almost gawking. He hadn't seen many aliens in person before, and he doubted Poe had, either.

"Wiles," the alien said.

"What?"

"My _yammer:_ Wiles. And your yammers are?"

He needed a moment to gather his thoughts.

"Finn. My friend here is Poe?" Wiles gazed down at the brill he carried.

"Ah. Poe. Interesting name."_ I have no idea why. Then again, these are aliens we're talking about here. Who ever knows what they're thinking?_

The brillblob approached Finn. _He want to introduce himself, too?_ As he did, though, Finn saw some kind of carved thing draped around his neck, half-lost among the rolls of sweating fat.

"Unkar Plutt. Wiles has just introduced hisself, and the two trashin' yon walker we call the Teedos. We 'ave transport a ways up the ledge, and from there ye'll be flyin' us off-planet."

Finn followed the climbing cables up to the rough shape of a sandskiff. The AT-AW was rapidly approaching it. Those Teedos, whoever they were, must've been good.

"After anything in particular?"

"A girl." The human was unsure what the ugly alien meant. "Now come along, we don't 'ave 'er oll day."


	2. Jakku: Impulse

Luke half-carried the tired junker down the hallway, trying his best to prevent her falling over. By the looks of it, even with the little bit of energy he'd passed on to her, falling would mean not getting up.

_"Whrreyeu…?"_ she slurred to him. Her vision was a fuzzy wall of red and brown.

"A friend. Now, don't talk, just - " Snap. Hisss. Green spike appearing from nowhere. A similar humming to that of the two black-clad assassins in the desert. The delayed report of a blaster. A yelp. A body hitting the floor. She did not question any of this.

The lightsaber went away.

"Artoo, how does it look up there?" Some buzzy wheepling of a droid over a communicator. "Understood, we're coming out now." Now to Rey: "Hurry. We don't have long."

The front door slid open, and Rey saw now that the sky was a churn. Red, blue, green thunder. Black clouds. And that magnic hum, she realized, had been persistent ever since she'd awakened.

A ship she recognized from Rebel holos shot down from the sky, gradually decelerated and pulled up a couple meters in front of them. Its parted wings gradually became two wholes.

The canopy popped open. A ladder folded from the hull itself. Rey's vision, as you can guess, was gradually clearing. The new figure shuffled with her over to it. They stopped a moment, as if he were trying to formulate the right plan. And failing.

Then:

"Get in. Artoo'll direct you from there, and don't fight it when you feel tired." He paused a moment, he began shuffling her a bit closer to the ladder. She understood, and gathered the strength in her arms to climb. Into the cockpit she went. So much equipment she'd never seen before, so many more she'd seen in odd places, like the gang barge. Her own "family's" skiff.

"Strap in," Luke told her. "It goes kinda fast." She nodded emptily, then started reaching around, trying to find the straps. Given time, she found the fabric strips that wrapped around her shoulders, and clipped them together. That'd be enough, she figured.

Luke shot a nod to his astromech. "May the Force be with you."

Droids don't have the Force, the R2 unit wheepled out. But he'd heard the rhetoric enough times to understand. The canopy closed. The fighter lifted, spread its wings and was off again, blowing Luke's black robes about himself.

He hoped he'd made the right decision, sending her off again like this. At least now she had Artoo with her.

He would finish his mission here alone, and signal for transport when he was done.

_Signal now,_ his impulse told him. So he pulled the thing from his belt, signaled to the New Republic overhead.

"Jadder Wun to Jadder Squadron: My X-Wing's coming up, Artoo's carrying an injured civilian. I'll be needing transport, if any up there are interested."

_"Jadder Foar to Jadder Wun: That's a negative on transport. We're - !"_ Silence. Brief signal loss. He cut his comms before they had a chance to get back to him.

He'd need to find some other way off Jakku. Like…

_No. Even for a Jedi, no._

Part of him dryly wanted to think of it as an adventure - the kind he'd longed for back on Tatooine. That part of him was more or less dead, but it still popped up now and again. If he'd ever wanted to kill some conscripted child soldiers, now was the time.

He would head for the First Order base nearby.

With the usual powers you'd expect from a Jedi - and his own knowledge of this world's layout - it wasn't hard nor long to find. And they knew of the Jedi, ya, but not that he would show no remorse when cutting through them. At least not outwardly.

Compared to the small city of kilometers-high transmitter towers, the First Order base was small - just a couple bell-shaped buildings strung together with a system of tunnels. Not very mobile, but probably quickly accommodating of transport ships. And the hangar wasn't hard to see from the outside.

Ornithopters passed over his head a time or two, but with a wave of his hand they would pass by. The second time, he saw it was heading back to base.

_They're pulling out their forces. I won't have that long._

That little voice again reminded him of why. He didn't like the idea at all.

Again, on impulse, he decided he would do everything he could to stop that, as if the idea had never occurred to him before. It certainly occurred to him now, though.

He came within twenty meters of the base when Terror Troopers were dispatched. As a sixth of the galaxy could personally attest to, the soldiers really did emulate the late Lord Vader uncannily. The stallers, the visils, even the unit commanders marked by the visible cybernetics and capes. But they had stolen that from Luke's own father and twisted it for their own purposes.

Once the green lightsaber came out, it didn't go away. Luke sure gave a good show when he had people to get through.

He was inside the base in nar time flat. More Terror Troopers and even a few non-masked Order officers. He'd give them all equal treatment.

The Darkness was strong here, perhaps as strong as on Korriban. Snoke. The Knights of Ren. Gone now. All the more sign that this lost ground was now disposable.

Another possibility, he hoped without seeing, would be to convince them all to abandon their posts and aid him in a mass exodus offworld. But that wasn't practical. And he didn't do much thinking once blaster bolts went flying.

He knew where the hangar was. He found it, started up one of the TIE Hexects, saw the controls were the same as the last TIE he'd stolen.

Luke blasted out of the First Order station and rigged the transmitter for Jadder Squadron frequencies.

"Jadder Squadron, Jadder Wun actual. Hexect on approach."

_Static. "Roger that, Jadder Wun actual. We need your fancy tricks up here. Badly." End transmission._

He saw why, even as he broke the lowest layer of clouds. He'd seen the blasterfire from the ground.

Now it was everywhere - one big party and every warship in the galaxy was invited… Almost every, anyway. It always seemed different as a battle moved closer and closer to a planet. MonCal dreadnoughts went toe to toe with gestola Hexects and other TIEs. The Empire was sure quick to pull out, though; only a handful of Clawcraft remained, and none of them moved planetward.

He truly ceased to be a participant, becoming a witness as his hands followed each image in turn: hundreds of fighters on all sides. Unfortunately he was still the enemy to his allies - just another Terry space bug.

He moved like the speed of light, fast as any Clone Wars-era droid fighter, sometimes faster. When he fired, it wasn't a question of hitting based on aim; it was instead an absolute journey, like conduction of heat and magnicism.

The TIE/oz Hexect is a modular ship, meant to form greater objects - _gestolii_ \- when linked to other Hexects. The hexacomb wings could fold into any shape, link to any port, share energy and battle data through touch. When studying insectoid physiology (ants, or _ormign_), the xenophobic faction's main space fighter becomes ironic.

He joined Order gestolii several times, breaking the formations in swift enough fashion to line them up for swift execution, zipping out fast enough that it could be none other than Luke Skywalker. And he earned his surname, dancing, walking amongst the starpoints of cannons and explosions.

He saw the new Star Destroyer the instant before it fully emerged from hyperspace. He didn't know they now built them wider than they were long. And it was wider than the First Order's Eclipses, which admittedly were small compared to the old Executors. He'd seen files on this ship. It, too, would earn its title.

* * *

Rey was half-delirious the whole time she was aboard the X-Wing. She'd never been in such a tight space for so long before. And the droid flashing symbols across the main readout didn't seem to help, either. Some of the characters she'd seen many a time before, others like things she could remember yesterday and would be clueless to tomorrow.

_"Greetings. I am R2-D2, and you're stuck in that cockpit until I get you to Coruscant."_

Something about the droid's mannerspeak made Rey suddenly regretful. He and Charlie probably would've gotten along great.

_"Who's Charlie?"_

She didn't realize she'd said any of that out loud.

"A friend," she replied whisperingly. "Droid, like _yout_. Big, ugly dome and a fast _bocker_."

_"Wun: computation astromechs always were the ugly ones. Too: I haven't heard Outerbase in years. I had a translator friend, would've gone **nonks** for you."_

A bit of turbulence as she finished reading the words. She looked outside and saw the whole universe going Heldown. Turbolaser fire in the distance. Rey gripped the nearest hand-sized holders she could, gripped them hard.

_"We'll have to head into that massive battle over there, if you don't mind. Hang on."_

She didn't feel any of the pull, none of the usual yanks she felt whenever any of her family were at the helm. It was like the world outside was a flat screen turning itself for her best view.

And soon she saw what all the lightshow was. More cannons, more ships, more everything than she'd ever seen before in her miserable Jakkui life!

Now data flashed across that central screen without thought. It looked like several different writing systems running at once, all moving in different directions but managing to avoid one another with space to spare.

It sure was beautiful outside. She had to think again of the view from the planet below, and realized all at once that _I'm finally free! I've left that miserable place behind once and for all!_ Despite it all she had to smile at that - possibly her first real smile in weeks, months, maybe even years.

The endless minor jerks of the ship became droning. Equipment hummed at just the right volume. The pain in her side and everywhere else subsided, and she found she was again being rapidly overtaken by exhaustion.

She fell asleep in the cockpit by the time the _Supremacy_ dropped over the desert.


	3. Jakku: Getting Out Alone

"Commander, we have to leave. Now."

The warning did not ring false in Thrawn's ears. Still, he sat on the observation deck in what she assumed was his favorite lounge chair, calm as a Nabooan wind, observing the spectacular view through binoks with increasingly analytical eyes.

"The Supremacy will arrive shortly, with its Duonoughts in tow. When that happens, the Order will finally decide no ground shall be conceded. Have the fighters already begun pulling out?"

Tore, the Zabrak female, nodded.

"Ja, the penultimates have."

"You know the plan for the rest."

"I do. Scramble them now?" He did not turn to face her, only continued observing the growing churn of the sky. The clouds were darker than she'd ever seen them on this world ever before - quite a few other worlds, too. Turbolasers had that way of reacting with atmosphere, she remembered. This whole planet would go to merter before long - any more than it already had.

Yet her commander sat here now, as she'd already remarked. One of Thrawn's alien proverbs about insanity came to mind.

She went back into the complex, began barking short trigger commands to facilitators. She made a move to an observation balcony overseeing the hangar, laid her elbows on the railing. Not many ships remained, but enough for an armed escort fitting of, say, an Imperial frigate.

A Chiss Imperial frigate. Their ticket off Jakku. In a way, the thing was a miniaturized Star Destroyer with the emphasis on speed, keeping the stretched-diamond shape and luna-grey color scheme, a little bridge blister nearer the back end. Several turrets throughout the ship, although nothing too big. Enough to get them out, though.

The remaining Clawcraft wing commander stopped next to her.

"Still himself?" He pointed to the roof, and the man resting on it. Tore nodded.

"Oh, ja. Unbecoming of a Nuruodo, almost. By their standards, he's already senile."

"But then again, when do their standards ever make sense?" She performed a good mimic, down to the contrived syllable twistings at the speed of light.

"'Yiou niydt noöldt uwndyrstaendt, oihnljyi do!'" The commander chuckled. At least one Blue Man's accent had been that thick when Tore met them. Good thing they needed only do, because sometimes understanding them was not just impossible.

Below them, the members of the Rodian's squadron were running below them in full black stormtrooper gear.

"Well, I gotta go."

"May the - " She decided against finishing the sentence. None of them needed or wanted to hear it, especially not the old Admiral.

Soon, the Pellaeon and its escort wing would be departing. She could just hear the yells over intercoms now, several seconds in advance. The comlink/readout on her arm started pulsing a holo-blue diagram into the air, providing verbal announcement of the enemy's arrival.

"First Order flagship and escorting Resurgent Duonaughts spotted overhead. All remaining Imperial fighters to hyperspace. Orbital bombardment estimated in ten minutes."

Cutting it close. Far closer than normal.

"Is the Pellaeon ready?" Thrawn was already down the ladder. Old though he was, he was already walking away at a speed requiring Tore jog to keep up with him.

"She's ready. Escort wing readying to launch." Then, she added: "Enjoy the view, Admiral?"

Without looking at her: "Ships visible from space with the naked eye are always worth the time." She also expected him to talk about what works of art they were. Although she admitted a one-of-a-kind like the Supremacy would be worth the personal view.

They climbed down another set of ladders, another set of platforms, aboard a horizontal turbolift, dismounted. The frigate's entry ramp was down, and they strode across to board. She estimated they had eight minutes now.

A shame they were bugging out like this, no matter how inevitable it was. Best they could do was lose with grace, and know how many to take down before making their escape.

The ramp came up almost before they were clear. Thrawn didn't seem to mind.

"Launch," he dictated, even as they lifted off. Two minutes to break atmosphere, another minute or so to finish final jump calculations. That was, if calculations weren't already done. Of course, they needed to get clear of anything with sufficient mass to even consider jumping.

He left for his private command room.

She jogged to the bridge. Grey-, black- and white-uniforned officers of several major species were relaying different data to one another.

One saw her enter, took note of the grey-gold uniform, went to a quick, urgent salute.

"Underadmiral." She nodded.

"Report."

"For lack of better term, we couldn't be more trapped. The battle's wrapping around the planet, down into the troposphere. Calculations are already complete, but gravity here's insane."

So's our Admiral, old age or not.

They'd waded into Hel.

Hel shouldn't be turning its attention to them. Eclipses don't fire at nothing, and they were too far from any New Republic force outside a trio of fighters.

"Are our cloaks up yet?"

"Negative." For a moment, Tore's world tilted, and the lights went dark. When they leveled out, their lights were not the same ones: the red alert lights.

"Definitely negative now. That's our cloak generator and redundant power."

Everything was walled off, on all sides. The wall was alive. And the pieces of the wall were trying to kill each other.

Transmission from Thrawn's room: "Straight through, full sublight, guns forward."

The holo-blue diagram of the situation was as you'd expect when the Zabrak turned to consult it: a big buzzing mass of nothingness. As the old scmirf manipulated the image on his end, the Pellaeon rattled again.

Zoom in on the frigate's current path, outlined by a stringy yellow-norang line. It punched through the ormign-hive like a blaster bolt, breaking out of the gravity bubble and hitting hyperspace.

Alone.

The navigators were already carrying our their Admiral's orders.

Njel, she thought. He can't do that! Those are - !

"Escort squadron down to three fighters," someone shouted. "Negative, make that two."

Outside, a Clawcraft passed in front of them, bearing the red stripes of wing leader.

In all her time with him, she'd never seen him sacrifice soldiers for a personal escape. Even in tight spots like this, there was always some way out, some greater trick!

Then again, time goes forward forever - never repeating. He'd taught her that.

But that's where the patterns began. And sacrificing soldiers so willingly was never part of that pattern.

"We've lost our escort."

"Duonought on us. It's separating!"

Sure enough: behind them, a Resurgent separated from its steel-grey platform - a Mandator-class Star Destroyer; both were now opening fire on them, although accuracy was clearly not these gunners' strong suits. (Thank the New Republic and a certain Hexect for shifting their sights.)

They also still had some agility advantage, although deploying some TIEs would always do good for destroying that.

But no TIEs came. Enemy ships were turning away.

"Almost outside gravity sphere. Ready for jump."

At least one gunner with decent sights got lucky.

Still, they managed a jump to hyperspace. Alone, as the Old Blue Man had estimated.

* * *

From the bridge of a hammerheaded Eclipse Destroyer, General Armitage Hux watched as the frigate's escorts were plucked from the sky.

"Concentrate our fire on that frigate. We must erase every Imperial asset we can."

Like good little forces of fear, we've let most of them slip through. Stupid, stupid!

"General, confirm: Imperial frigate Pellaeon."

Ah, yes.

His own holodiagram focused on the red points - their ships; and the yellow points - their enemy.

Blasterfire. Klaxons.

"Duonoughts sustaining targeted damage to turrets. It's one of ours."

"What?"

It pulled up on their diagram: a lone Hexect, clearly standing out from the others, firing on his comrades when their backs were turned.

His Supremacy must have enjoyed his good timing:

"Luke Skywalker," he declared over his personal holoprojector. Hux jumped a little as his deformed projection came to life. "That Imperial frigate is no longer your concern, General. Mark that Hexect!"

"It will be done, Father," he told Snoke. To the bridge: "Gunners, mark it." Back to Snoke: "But Chiss Admiral Thrawn is - "

"You will not question me, my Son," the corpse ordered. "You will focus on Skywalker!"

He became a sharp jade point on their diagram. And it must've known even as the order was given, because he broke formation and throttled it back into the New Republic zone.

"Gunners on the Pellaeon: fire!" Several got off shots. That would have to be enough.

The Supremacy was now getting involved. It dispatched two squadrons of TIE fighters - led by the Knights of Ren in their leading Silencers, no doubt. Not the Hexects, but true TIE/fos, forward dagger-shaped wing foils and all.

The Pellaeon wavered a moment, escaped their gravity well and winked from existence. He'd lost a grave threat to the Order's superiority. They would suffer dearly for that, all of them.

But His Supremacy - Hux's Father - was right. If they could destroy the last of the Jedi…!

"All Eclipse bowcannons to the nearest scumship, fire at will. Open channels the Supremacy and Duonoughts."

A comms operator: "Channel open, General."

"Good." He tapped the comlink on his First Order insignia, checking if it still worked. Silly habit, but a habit nonetheless.

"This is General Hux, do all ship tacticians copy?"

He heard a storm of affirmative-affirmatives. Good.


	4. Jakku: Family Squabbles

Kylo Ren's Silencer blocked the comms sync with Hux and the rest of the fleet - 'simple equipment malfunction', if you like. He would not collide with any nearby ships, he would hit every ship he shot at. This, he Felt to be true.

The transmission reached his ears anyway:

_"...Luke Skywalker… Hexect..."_

_Luke Skywalker. My uncle. I'll kill him too._

Part of him didn't want to. Disciplines dictated he would choke it, strangle that odd color in the scheme of himself - his soul.

He'd followed such discipline before.

He would be like his grandfather, this ship would become his body, his lightsaber, his conduit to all beyond himself. Through his Knight's mask, he closed his two oyos, and opened his Third.

The Silencer's hull became his skin. Its wingfoils became his arms. Its blasters, his fire-breathing mouth. He would burn his enemy: the last of the Jedi. With that, perhaps his new Father would be pleased.

Kylo could even hear His Supremacy's voice now, calling from his incredible city-ship_: Kylo Ren, my Son, you will do this for me._

_I will, Father._

He punched his drive, and he was running through the void. Blasterfire all around him as the Banshii screamed their deadly screams to one another. He weaved through them, occasionally silencing an enemy forever.

To Kylo Ren, this is Existence:

Grass. Mud. Fire. Stormclouds. Monstrous soldiers clad in silver, crimson, green. Jaws without hinges open in warlike screams to reveal curved fangs, and the real combat is in their throats. They scream, and as he passes between them he screams, too, and their skeletons fold like twigs under the weight of his burning cries.

He knows his own men: silver and red, with large spiked helmets vaguely reminiscent of his Ancestor's deformed face - his true face, the face of Darkness. The face every Terror Trooper on the real plane now wears, exposing the vile faces of every Trooper's true selves. He glimpses glowing cybernetic eyes, metallic tattoos, artificial noses, rusted fangs, scalp covered by greasy armorweave instead of hair.

Somewhere in the midst of this battle, he finds his target: the black-clad creature shrouded in the emerald lightsaber aura he despises so much. With pure white eyes without pupils, the robed creature lifts its hood, reveals an elder countenance hidden under the slightly translucent helmet.

With a black-gloved hand he reaches out towards him, he hears the wrinkly old monster utter a word, a dead name.

_"I see you."_

On the two-dimensional plane, the battle is everywhere. But even further beyond that, in this proxy-place Kylo has constructed, they may levitate above the rest of the bloodshed, become removed unto themselves.

Just as in the real world, they're flying. Clouds and lightning await orders as two sorcerers work their magicks. Electric-blue lightning becomes red and green in their hands as they hurl the things to one another in a silence to rival any material vacuum, yelling their cries into the void of dead air.

With one bolt of furious blood lightning Kylo hacks away, burning off his enemy's robes, revealing his true nature, like that of one of the Old Masters: white battle armor over light brown robes, that aged deformity which made even Kylo, a hand of the Darkness, fearful. His uncle was so disgusting he would take pleasure in striking him down, just as he had done to - !

He cannot say the name. He simply lashes out with all his power, leaking from every pore, letting it take the path of least resistance so that it may inflict pain, damage, death.

This is the Existence Kylo Ren has made.

And Luke Skywalker sees it, too.

* * *

From a distance, a well-trained eye would see how the Silencer tracked the rogue Hexect, which always seemed to not have any side in mind when it opened fire. The battle seemed to move around them, and they as if the battle did not exist.

Serbris Ren was assigned a very different task. He had also denied Hux's comms sync, and was now shooting his Silencer towards a New Republic scumship. Of course, fighters greeted him, but this was still no different than some of the wild game he'd hunted, which would lay traps and diversions for him at random. If he didn't shoot past them in time, he'd shoot at them without ever stopping.

He saw the isolated fighters not with his own eyes, but with the Eye he'd been given.

_Luke Skywalker. Kylo Ren. Leave your family squabbles in the void, this war is bigger than you both_.

He fired on them. And in doing so entered their little vision. With his presence, it changed again. The sky got red. Everyone was an animal.

But Serbris Ren never let himself fully depart from Reality. He knew when he fired, what ammunition he was carrying, his accuracy. The hunt was still on; and just like the two Skywalkers, his ship was an extension of himself.

New Republic ships surrounded him on all sides. The Silencer swung about like a whole turret, firing off torpedoes and green laserfire in all directions. He needed to keep on them, even as their skirmish took on a life of its own outside the sphere of Duonoughts and Scumships. The Hexect and other Silencer danced circles around each other like the duelists inside, fire and lasers going off all around them. And just as he predicted, they moved outward.

He Reached out, probing minds of pilots and astromechs, tracking their movements by the marks they'd left. They marked themselves as little red lines in his Third Eye, and he weaved through them instant by instant. No, I will not let him jeopardize this, too.

He fired again. Was hit starboard by glancing fire, which was possibly even meant for him. The TIEs and Republic fighters around them grew thinner and thinner, from the proximity of several meters apiece to several hundred.

_"...Silencers...Ren...follow them!"_

The meaning was clear enough. That might've been Hux's voice. Now, to tune in to uncle and nephew…

A sword met a sword, clashed with a scraping squeal. Not lightsabers, but the outdated metal blades, not even vibro-enabled. Lightning, a mainstay of melodrama in the Hunter's mind.

_"Just die, old man!"_

_"At your hand? That won't be easy."_

They were flying. For a non-literal narrative of the clash of fighter ships, the basic premise was still there.

Somewhere over a mountain, a silver giant had a stone ready to hurl. Would he be polite and knock things off-course, or let it do its thing? It was easy to choose the former.

The Hexect couldn't last long. The pilot's will was unbreakable, yet imagine a double-amputee as a star athlete - a kickboxer, or a runner, perhaps.

In Reality his trigger finger squeezed with superhuman quickness in its repetition. Grazed the Hexect's hull, plus one or two 'strays' on the other Silencer. From his cockpit with the Force he let go of his footing in their constructed unworld and reached out his right hand.

Solid-round munitions? Coming from a Star Destroyer some hundreds of kilometers away? Swatted aside with ease.

Hexects built cheap, with oft-unstable fuel cores? As stated before, already the wear was obvious.


	5. Jakku: Quick Surprise Reunion

Beebee didn't know what overtook him when the Jedi came. He'd seen some of the data on the brill: The Great Deceiver, Killer of Children, Enemy of Order, plenty of other indoctrinated titles which meant absolutely nothing to him.

Charlie was dead. He had been alive, and now he wasn't. Must've taken him a while to realize that he would be on his own from now on.

He swung down off the console on his cables and to the floor. He must get out of here - the station's magniclamps had been undone.

Out into the hallway. He saw the bodies, found a way to roll himself over them. He also saw the razordisk Rey had thrown sticking out the guts of a First Order conscript.

_She'll need that. It served her well the first time._

That's when he remembered why he would look for Rey: she would be his objective, his link to… Charlie. To Finn. To Poe. The only ones he had left.

He would deliver the weapon back to its owner.

Heard the blasterfire, registered his growing magnic instability. And at the same time, he could "feel" the quiet. Little on the planet itself moved.

He would need to find a ship leading off this world. Soon.

He would need to leave the pole. The ships overhead, as Charlie would've said, were getting _awfully friskian._

The gyromech monitored every ship that came within two kilometers of him. That ended up as an ill-fated Fel Clawcraft, low-formation Hexect gestolii, a _tuon_ of ARC-220s.

Without paying much thought to what touched down, he simply kept rolling. He must not think.

Turbolaser fire was reacting with the atmosphere. Nimbus clouds gathered around ship-sized nuclei, accentuated each engine and cannon discharge. Lightning was beginning to connect itself with the ground. The delayed reports took up the entirety of his audiosensor range.

_**CRAKHOOM**_.

Beebee just kept rolling. _Don't stop. You're alone. If you stop, you're in greater danger. You'll "die" alone. Just as Charlie "died" alone._

The First Order suicide shuttle touched down somewhere behind him. He did not take note of it.

* * *

"If we're going to find anything, it'll be around the pole. Most of the Order operates out of there, and they have more ships than probably anyone else around."

Unkar: "We seen 'ese thopters. Why not jack en'?" Poe replied as he wrapped Terry visil-strap 'round the back of his head:

"Can't break atmosphere. Besides, screw-all ship-to-ship armament. Wouldn't survive the mess."

Finn, through his own staller an visil, nodded in agreement to Unkar. He nodded in reply. Both agreed without saying that the blobby alien's permanent scowl was beyond unsettling. They kept their blasters at the ready.

"Then to yon pole 'tis. Teedos, punch 'er like she's nev' been punched afore."

The Silent one ran a finger over the rim of his goggles, then reached his hand inside the console. The one who spoke fiddled with the external controls, with an agility and complexity most humans wouldn't see the pattern in.

_"Yaga! WAAAAA!"_ The speaking Teedo hollered, wide-mouthed, tongue wagging a good distance beyond his lips.

"You'll want to hold on. The Teedos get a bit _unungly _at the controls." The grey-skinned creature with the still-unnerving Coreworlds accent wrapped two of his hands to a guardrail. For safe measure, his furthest arm gripped it, too, after pulling a pair of goggles to his _oyos_.

"Yaga wawa _jyaaaaaahaha!"_

The speed was greater than even what Poe had driven at. Finn was thrown against the back rail and held on for all he was worth. Speaking Teedo cackled.

The whole trip there was a blur of yelling, hollering and verging sickness. Wiles' three arms needed every pound of strength between them once his bare feet lost grip on the trembling floor.

Unkar had some weight and good traction on him, plus a decent grip on their nav console. The Teedos were at that console, and "punching 'er like she's nev' been punched afore" certainly makes good time.

The obelisk city of Net Station was up ahead. Poe tried yelling "there it is!" The hum in the defectors' ears of their own helmets was the most painful part of it, somehow. Even over the slowly-liquefying engines, the thing which rattled their feet was the buzzing of the metal floor, the NavCon, the guardrail.

The six saw something descending from the sky - _several_ somethings, the way the skiff rattled, and several blurry somethings at that.

Their engines gave out, but their lev-system had the common courtesy to slow them down a bit before they were spilled out onto the _ferrum_ sand. Could've been worse.

Finn groaned, tried to get his helmet off all at once; struggling made it even worse as he writhed on the ground. No, that was a lie. Still mercy against First Order interrogations, but this was present. And that mauling from all sides just earlier today. _Supreme xrap, I'll be the torture expert of the universe before long. Poe, too. Especially Poe._

All at once, the staller came loose. His head thonked against packed sand, and he swore his whole skull resonated with the impact. He could wrestle off one piece with greater progress than two interlocked pieces. Finn gasped, relishing any air not recycled, got to his feet. He didn't throw the Terry visil away, just clamped it to his belt with a loop. He already saw one of the diminutive aliens running back towards to the rest of their speeder, staller held just above its head in… triumph? Quite possibly.

"Are we… here?"

Grunting: "Yes, Finn, I think we're here. See the big sticker trying to scratch the sky?"

He nodded, even if his partner was not looking in his direction. But he squinted, reached for the binoks in his belt. Not there, only that damned visil again. He sighed, then unclipped the Terry mask and did his best to see through it.

"I also see Order shuttles coming back down." He looked closer. Poe was already running to his side, his own binoks in hand. "Suicides, by the look of it."

"_Schet_." He turned to their alien partners. "Hey! We got company at the station!"

The fat one - Unkar - turned the two men into a line by stepping beside Finn on the other side. He wasn't seeing much through the visil - they were made to be scary, not functional. Damned Order manufacturing.

"Then we keep moving. Afoot. Come on, ye know yer own stakes!"

That snapped them into it. They got to running, Poe and Finn leading as the swiftest with the aliens falling in behind.

Finn: "Any weapons?"

Poe: "The blasters in our hands! Any other suggestions?"

"Suicide troops are pretty _nakstin_, you know that." Poe couldn't argue that. But at the moment they'd just need to rush in and hope they mowed down a few before the same fate grabbed them, too.

They had cover, at least. No shortage of debris. Poe wondered how much more they'd have in even five minutes. The sky was already experiencing turbolaser burn as thunderclouds. Booming of dozens of space-capable engines entering the potent magnetic field. Through his gloves, the blaster thrummed nakstinly in his hand. Soon they'd be rendered numb, if he wasn't careful about it. But he kept running ahead to the nearest brill-sized hull plate, maybe a hundred meters from the shuttle's touchdown point.

Behind them, Wiles bundled up whatever the whirlwind-legged Teedos needed held on to.

"Agh, you know I cannot carry all this!"

"_Immi booolo wiggy wiggy ra!"_

"And even worse to you, disgusting creature." Still, he shouldered the little trinkeretts with little more grumbling.

Suicide troops are known for being especially silent, just as merciless as normal Terries. Other than that, neither scientist had known much about them, and that was how it was to be. Finn found a waist-tall speeder engine, most likely useless, and crouched behind it. The metal rang in his ears as the blaster rang in his palms. He shot a glance to Poe, then looked over.

Looked like their goal was to secure the station… in its final moments. He'd never heard of _Exterminatus_ in practice before, but every Order initiate knew what it was.

It'd be ironic if their giver of punishment was the fortress they'd just exposed. That'd be a bolt of lightning to rival not just the coming storms on this world, but of the thing's own namesake. He nearly killed the first Emperor, for Supremacy's sake.

These special Terries were so focused on storming the station that they didn't seem to notice anything else. Of course, Terry visils didn't have peripheral capabilities worth a damn.

Finn nodded to Poe. Poe nodded to Finn, then to the fat one. The three-armed one. The short ones.

They moved discreetly, but with little cover.

* * *

Beebee detected blasterfire.

Back behind cover it was, then!

Well, what cover there was. He tracked two Hexects and an as-of-yet unidentified bomber bearing down on them dead-stick. Estimated landing: two minutes.

If…

_If, indeed._

_Search: equipment inventory. Something… big._

_"Know thy self." Big lesson there._

Either way, he had it. Still dragged the razordisk behind him, too. Part of the whole reason he fought for survival now.

_**KASHOOT.**_

Up the flare went, shooting up and out, a bright white-orange. With any hope, it was a diversion.

(But a diversion for whom?)

Scrambled radio chatter. He struggled to retrieve a memory of Charlie's rambling about Imperial Death Troopers: tall, almost skeletal stormtroopers whose scrambled radio chatter was just as terrifying as their combat prowess.

Inherent traits in the next generation. That was another tangent of Charlie's. Part of the reason this whole was locked between wars, with only little _chakra_-naps in between.

_Bzzzz. Khlzzzznzzzpa._

And all at once, two Terror Troopers on each side of Beebee. Blasters raised.

_So much for that. Charlie, I join you in nothingness..._

When the one on his left spoke, he spoke in Droidspeak:

_"Freeze, clanker."_

His reply:

_"You first, fleshbag."_

_"Why, you little - !"_ He shouldered his blaster: an oversized thing with a barrel that was most definitely compensation.

Then he went down. The other Terror Trooper barely had time to turn before his head - or _several_, by the look of it - jerked back, and he fell against a duraplast barrel. It thudded hollowly and two fell as one.

His primary optic tracked the body. Took his receptors a while to line up the audio and visuals.

"**Beebee? That really you?**"

_Mreeeeedidleeeeeep. It's Poe!_

The brill knelt before the gyromech, petted him gently, with long-lost affection. He chuckled.

"It's good to see you!" Blasterfire somewhere behind them. Poe turned, then back to Beebee. "_Escutshes _here, I gotta go."

Then he got up and started running.

_Do I have another flare?_

_Why, ja, I do._

He shot up again. Straight up. Same trick would work twice if this time it was intentional.


	6. Jakku: Exterminatus

"Priming hull cannons, General."

"Very well." Hux switched his view to the holomap of the fighters' battle. The signal had already been sent out, but the station could not fall into enemy hands, not for a moment. They would secure troops to die a glorious death if that's what it took, and it was. "Exterminatus', a word taken from some old Empire's hypothetical policy on purging dissenters, was incredibly fitting. Some of their other policies, the Order was a bit more hesitant to adopt, and others still were adopted readily.

Hux was no Knight, but he was the Supremacy's Son all the same. His actions must reflect that, or else he could never live with himself.

Both Knights of Ren were rogue, fighting some old man in a Hexect. Luke Skywalker, sure, but no Jedi had ever faced Exterminatus before, and Jedi were not his problem. Their orders were clear, and they had another part to play, yet their Father let these two run about with no regard for the grander scheme. The fourth... he didn't want to think about the fourth. Especially not with this battle at hand, without him even involved. He was off doing other errands for the Order.

Judging by Republic movements, they were trying to reach the planet, and likely halt the Exterminatus as well. But, Hux had to admit, the Knights were keeping the Jedi too busy to help them with that.

The _Supremacy_ was their weapon. Jakku would not survive. Nor any of the disgusting nonhumans living there. He had no sympathy for them, no sympathy for the planet itself. It should've been wiped out long ago, for all he cared. Take Net Station with it, too. The Empire had made it something to fight over, and they'd at last been driven away. The Republic had moved in, but they would be too late. Based on the _kletserfrak_ of the battle at hand, he doled out his new round of orders. The Republic's fighters were weaving between tight-fisted Destroyers and their larger escorts.

"Coordinate fighters into position in the lower atmosphere. Hexects will fortify, maintain a constantly shifting pattern. Destroyers, form clusters of five and do the same around the _Supremacy._ Remaining fighter craft will take the fight to the scumships. All midsize ships, you answer the nearest Duonought."

"Hull cannons warming up, General."

"Good." But he sensed that wasn't the end of it. "And?"

"Sir?" Nothing, apparently.

Slight pause. His oyos shot back to the holodisplay, spurred by something saying he shouldn't miss it. And that impulse was right - something had just gone very wrong.

* * *

Meanwhile, from a New Republic ship, the commanding Admiral ordered fighters to pull back. But not into hyperspace, even away from Jakku. Just away from where the First Order had declared the surrounding space to be theirs. Under the Jakkui sky, junkers everywhere looked up and saw that their sky was something few had seen before, and never on this scale. Sure, ships came and went, sometimes in groups or spread out for safety, but never hundreds, easily thousands. All they'd ever seen on a scale like this were the holos: poorly edited accounts of Yavin, Endor, Naboo, Caprica. And most junkers were smart enough to take these as fictions, fairy tales to keep the gaping wounds of their banishment fresh.

"No!" Hux shouted. "We canno - ...!" He was about to say 'we cannot let them reach the surface'. Which was true. The First Order would give no ground, not even in death. But even Hux found himself reeling inside from how doctrine contradicted strategy.

Now he wanted to tell himself it wouldn't matter, forget how blasphemous willingly giving doomed territory up was. But that wasn't all.

That Republic Admiral, probably some inhuman thing, was telling her pilots to get a lip up on their adversary.

He cleared his throat, hoping to let the anger flow from his _coraz_ into his orders.

"Hexects, move your formations outward, _True'isht_ along the horizon. Duonought Too-Brafol, protect the _Supremacy._ All others, disperse with the Hexects." Now he spoke again to his bridge. "Cannons status?"

"Almost to firing strength, General."

"Good. We don't have - "

Blast impact knocked him to the floor, away from his comms desk and the holoconsole. He heard several crewmen yelling and groaning, muttering their alien curses. As he got to his feet he gave his next order:

"The next _xenoloan_ I hear is submitted to the Organicum for enhancements." No one made reply to this; if they had, that meant just as much as saying it. "Duonought Too-Brafol, where are you?"

"Almost to your position, _Supremacy._"

He nodded to himself.

Snoke sent a transmission through. The whole fleet heard it.

"_My Sons, report back to the fleet. Your work with Skywalker is done. Now._"

Hux motioned to the officer feeding him reports. She pulled up a few visual cues of the Hexect towards one side of the 3-D diagram: badly damaged, internal fires. It shouldn't still be flying. In fact, there was no way any normal pilot could keep themselves alive in that thing. The Jedi brill could do no more if he wished to keep his life. And sure, what records they had would tell tales of a Jedi's suicidal madness, but these were bloated pieces of propaganda through multiple regimes' filters. No way information can remain factual after so long.

Two Silencers broke away from the Hexect and re-entered the central zone of Hux's readout.

"Hull cannons primed, General."

"And the other ships?"

"Assuming positions. Still facing heavy resistance from Republic fighters."

"Not if the Knights of Ren have their way. Are their comms up again?"

"Yes, sir. Patching us through." The comms light blinked a steady orange-yellow against his console. He leaned heavily onto it with both _manei_, vaguely aware his palms were sweating. They did that sometimes.

"Knights of Ren, my _Brothers_, this is General Hux. Your presence is required in completing Exterminatus to Jakku. Respond."

Several spans of silence.

"_This is Serbris Ren. Proceeding to _Supremacy."

"_Kylo Ren, proceeding to _Supremacy."

"Understood. And do hurry up, _boys_. Wouldn't want to keep our Father waiting."

Now they hated him even more. Good. He hated them, too.

* * *

...

* * *

Somewhere, some hundreds of miles away from the rest of the fleet, the Hexect floated. One hexagonal wing was bent, twisted into a lopsided cube. Sparks shone through the viewport. And inside, Luke Skywalker's eyes were closed, his _manei_ stretched out to either side of the cramped cockpit. He quivered slightly, practically begging with the Force just to hold the ship in a state of non-explosion.

Even as he talked, he listened. It told him, in abstracts he now read as words: you are about to receive a transmission. He opened his ears.

_"Rebel Scum to Jadder Wun actual, please respond."_

He let one hand loose; the ship rattled him, throwing his head against the hull. The world buzzed for several moments, but he thumbed a button on his comm and sounded out his response.

"Jadder Wun actual to Rebel Scum: I'm here. And I'm badly damaged. What's your status?"

_"The _Supremacy _is readying some kind of weapon, we think it's a superlaser."_ He heard two voices: the one over the comms, and the voice of the universe. Again, he'd learned to read the abstracts as words. There was something that needed to be corrected, some force of nature realigning itself. And it acted through people, as it always had, who didn't need to hear to listen. This was no different, though it meant surrendering their objective here.

"Rebel Scum, this is Jadder Wun actual, open a channel to the fleet, authorization Malak-Trill-Dorn, fife-tree-sevin-seks-too-wun-niner, 'bad feeling.'" He waited for the signal that he was cleared.

"_We hear you, Jadder Wun actual, go ahead._" He needed to make sure he'd heard the other voice correctly, but there was no mistaking it. This had to happen, or else he'd be responsible for the destruction of half the fleet, and it would happen anyway. That was worse. He couldn't keep his free hand away from the hull for long, he was almost holding this Hexect together with his bare hands, Force or no Force.

"New Republic fleet, this is Luke Skywalker. I am giving the order to pull back from Jakku into Republic space. The First Order doesn't want to lose Jakku, but are willing to destroy it and the surrounding space, including us. In the interest of the preservation of our forces, I declare Net Station lost. Pull back to the Hosnian system."

One-way from Rebel Scum, their designated flagship's callsign: "_Understood, Skywalker. You are now cleared to dock with _Great Krommul, _that's the carrier nearest you. See it?_"

"I see it, Rebel Scum. Might be a while, though."

"_Why's that, sir?_"

He had to chuckle. There would be no easy way to say it. With an invisible third hand he held down the communicator button long enough to place his real hand back against the hull. Not a second too soon, it seemed. It hummed like some middle-grade piece of lawn equipment.

"It's... a surprise. Jadder Wun out."


	7. Jakku: Can You Fly?

Poe, Finn, Beebee, Unkar, Wiles, the Teedos. Seven in total. And they had First Order Terries to deal with. Terries with orders to secure Net Station till the bitter end.

Lightning danced like dust devils from the fingers of the ash-grey Ship Gods looming to the horizon. Hel was completely blocked now, despite being mid-afternoon; all light came from the burning clouds, blazing engines and laserfire from the sky. The two humans clamped their jaws to their tongues hoping it would stop their _denters_ from ringing.

Reciprocating blasterfire split them up, but all the junkers and humans were armed. Poe bit his tongue as he took a dive behind their shuttle for cover, one of the Teedos crouching just a few arms' lengths from him.

They saw another flare go up, close enough to not just be the battle all around them, or a magnic burst riding the air. So did the Suicide Terries. Poe and Finn opened up, both hobbling forward, the junkers getting the same idea and managed to take out a chunk, though that left maybe a dozen Vader-looking figures, taller than the average Terror Trooper and with splashes of bone-white. This newfound group only heard radio static interlaced with harsh syllables, little else.

From Unkar: "Bri, we do a quick 'en, the old win-tee, yol kennin'?"

Finn and Poe barely had time to register what that meant when all four junkers seemed to disappear. As in, just vanish behind the nearest corner they could find. The two humans shot each other a look, reminding each other they were still there. Poe spit a bit of blood to the sand, gripped emptily at his abdomen. Now that he realized it, it was a miracle he was still standing. Some people could just go like that, he supposed. If Order indoctrination could be believed, a human could survive roughly three months of nonstop battle with a couple breathers and the right stims. Considering the occasional shoot of pain spreading outward like roots from his stomach, he found himself hoping it was possible, but would not apply to him. Not yet, at least.

The troopers took defensive positions, blasters trained in all directions.

Poe collapsed. Finn saw it. And he shouted, drawing their attention, blaster raised but aiming not his priority. He didn't even think to fire. Or maybe he did.

"Poe!" This, along with any possibility of blasterfire, was swallowed for a moment by a lightning strike somewhere _Saolt-true_ of them. He could hardly tell if the words had left his mouth, his skull seemed to resonate with the universe. He wondered if Poe could name the pitch of the hum in his own head.

Their blasters turned. In the right direction.

**_ZAP. ZAPZAPAZAPAPAPAPAZAP. PEW PEW._**

Even elite killers can be stupid. All the ensuing killing meant little to the Teedos, was a chore to Wiles, but Unkar relished in it. Part of what had landed him on Jakku on the first place. As several Suicides turned - several moments too late - Finn was the second pincer on the claw, and they closed tightly around the First Order bri.

Finn: "Poe's got serious injuries, there should be some medical supplies in the shuttle."

Unkar: "Ye know how't fly if he cannit?" Finn didn't answer. The fat alien sounded almost casual about it, testing, like a teacher who needs to know when to step in.

Beebee rolled out. No one heard him. But within himself, he could hear rattling components shearing off. Internal cooling systems had nothing on these kind of scenarios; no First Order droid had been intended for prolonged exposure in these conditions.

Finn rushed first to where Poe was struggling to get to his feet, coughing a big wad onto Finn's own already slightly-bloodied jacket. He saw the alien junkers had found what was easily identified as the cockpit. They'd be stupid to pull their usual antics, breaking a viewport as if jacking a speeder, or trying to muscle a door open.

Another thunderclap, interlaced with laser exchanges that just kept getting closer and closer, coming farther and farther down. All six organic beings still alive looked up:

The First Order ships were halfway through the atmosphere directly over Net Station. Some were glowing with bright _rollen_ spots.

The hatch had closed when the last of the squad had exited. Finn and Poe knew the basics of how to get one open; even stargazers like themselves were given a far-too-adequate understanding of their equipment.

Finn gave instructions as he slung his partner's arm over his shoulder:

"Rip open that control panel, there should be a few badly-shielded wires. They're magnic, you'll want to cut the current, dig down a bit farther and there'll be another _filful_ of cables. Somewhere in there's the back lift mechanism, can't tell you whi - !"

Lightning strike, followed closely by another.

Scratch that.

Ship-to-ship low air bombardment. The sky went ferrum-colored for several blinks. Then settled into that bloody _rollen_ again. Their oyos all shot up again.

Beebee rolled up alongside Poe.

"Beebee!" Poe coughed it out. "Good to know you survived that." He grinned sadly to the droid. "I might not, though. Don't get your hopes up. Don't worry, Finn's a very good - "

"Poe! Put a clamp on it."

The Teedos were quick to pull out some tools, some of which were dropped graciously to the sand by Wiles. One standing atop the other's head, he reached a nimble hand in and sent sparks flying. Sent out a few curses that would sound natural on a First Order officer whose home world hasn't been washed from his mind completely. Like these two. Not on a waist-high black-skinned alien nowhere close to human outside of two arms and two legs.

Wiles paced casually towards a suicide trooper struggling to stay alive. With a blaster in each outer arm, he planted one hole each at the most vital spots: head and stomach. If he survived one, the other would take him, leaving him the option between an instant death and a drawn-out one if he was strong enough.

Didn't seem to be, though.

Laughter, a bit too human. "_Ookh-thoo wiggivikki, we got 'em good!"_

Sparks flew, but the rear ramp dropped. Perhaps too fast. Scratch that, too. Definitely too fast.

Unkar extended two blobby arms to take Poe's lower half. Finn didn't accept the offer. However, when the fat alien leaned towards him, he saw the crystal dangling from a worn brown string around his oversized neck, which was thicker than his head. A wonder it didn't go flying off at any moment, especially after such a display as the trip that'd gotten them here in historic time.

Finn dragged Poe up the ramp. Wiles and Unkar were right behind them, Beebee rolling alongside. The Teedos brought up the rear, and the ramp closed them in.

At the front of the little hold was the cockpit.

"Poe, can you sit in a cockpit?" He nodded.

"So long as I don't die in breaking atmosphere."

_Xrap. That's right. Schet! _Then, a holdover from Caprican slang: _Frak!_

"Junkers, breaking atmosphere is going to be a bit bumpy, no matter who's piloting."

"Well, we ain' got ev'n till Heldown. We strap in and we go! Now!"

Then Finn remembered what droids were used for.

"Beebee! Can you interface with this shuttle?"

_Possible._ And he found the interface port that'd give them the answer. As that happened, Finn ran towards the cockpit, motioning for Unkar to follow him. He didn't know why.

"Wiles, get yon brill stable. Teedos, keep d'fires to a minimum!" With a kind of weightlessness unbecoming of his size, he seemed to float into the copilot's seat.

Wiles strapped himself in beside Poe, started going to what medical work three-armed creatures can do with little proper equipment. He had the stuff for sterilizing (most of) a wound and covering it, little else. Poe seemed to be losing the strength to cry out even as the sound shot from his throat.

Finn flipped some switches, struggling to remember what each thing was likely to look like. Gravity compensators, fuel valves, hyperdrive bearing, directional thrusters. And free-spinning toggles: speed, gyroscopics, shield rotations. A good chunk of it he was hoping Beebee could do.

The ship lurched upward and forward, almost nosediving into the ground. But Unkar took the tilt joystick in time and righted them, angling them upward.

"Switch the gravity compensators to sync with gyroscopics." And inside the ship, things righted themselves against external gravity. He had no idea what he was doing.

From the passenger hold: "What was that?" Wiles leaned in close.

"What?"

"Your friend here says you can set your hyperdrive for a short burst, the guidance systems have a map of empty space you can match us for." That would get them outside the battle long enough to punch in more detailed coordinates.

Not everything the First Order had was one big _kletserfrak_. Maybe this battle and place were, but not a few of their machines. Some things could operate efficiently. And were almost being used "wrong", Finn found himself thinking.

_Sure hope I can pull us out of here. This Unkar's not bad at the controls either. He knew to throw the gyros._

_Let's see what else these aliens know._

"Got it punched in, Beebee?"

Outside, Finn saw a few First Order ships warming up their cannons. Pointed downward. At the whole planet. A boxed-in Republic fighter squad didn't notice them. He angled their nose towards the emptiest pocket of sky he could see.

_Yes. Do it._

Unkar threw the hyperdrive throttle.

It was like a punch to the whole body as gravity clashed with compensators clashed with engines clashed with hyperdrive. Their viewport dissolved into silvery-rollen ribbons around them.

And a bang.


	8. Jakku: Bearing Witness

Both Silencers shot back to the _Supremacy_, its entire massive underside glowing a pure rollen, the color of the Darkness' lightsabers.

With their Third Hands, they gathered a first grip on the many cannons - living arms - of the _Supremacy_. They did not sense the shuttle coming up to barely rejoin the fleet before shooting into another layer of the universe.

From atop the body of a thousand invisible Destroyers, their Father called to them:

_"My sons. Now you will do as you have trained: guide my many hands to keep this target out of enemy hands."_

_The enemy's pulled out,_ Kylo Ren thought to himself. He did not need to guess that his Brother Serbris thought the same thing. But a line had been crossed, and it would not be permitted ever again.

It seemed simple enough, and indeed it was.

And note the more complicated now that their enemy was already pulling out. Now that his bodily mind out the question to itself, this amounted to office bureaucracy on the planetary scale: not at all meant to be a show of force, but a casual chore. A long-disputed source of material for their enemies to use against them, transmitting lie after lie to not just their enemies, not just their allies, but everyone. And its holos became historic truth for those who consumed.

Not just taking out everything stinking alien condemned to death on this world; the Knights of Ren euthanized alternate truths. Lies. Guarantees of their own inferiority.

If Serbris had thought of this, he would have refused to do something so trivial by this point; instead he would have asked why he hadn't been called to do so earlier. But now he would be just another errand boy, just like rebellious boy Kylo (though the two were roughly the same age).

But this fact didn't bother Kylo Ren. By this point it was his natural outlook on the Order.

He would destroy Jakku for his "Father" anyway.

Outside, the Silencers took their place on either side of the _Supremacy_, some sixty kilometres apart, the rollen glow of the cannon arrays on its underbelly casting their aura now on the whole scattered fleet.

Some of which jumped to hyperspace back to Starkiller, their role in this drama accomplished. TIEs of several models returned to their home ships by the hundreds, each Star Destroyer booming through the emptiness and winking out in an instant. The _Supremacy _and its escort would remain until the job was done, and back at base their crews would deliver the news in the mess halls, their barracks on Starkiller Three, as part of subjugation patrols on Four and Two. In the end, they would know the truth His Supremacy graced them with. That's what this was about.

Across space, the two Knights joined with every hyperlaser strand, hands feeling the warmth of building destruction - and a sensation almost like a handshake. If energy could feel, it would be tickled.

Their Third eyes saw Creation from the compounded perspective of every laser they reined in: Jakku was a monochrome ferrum sphere, not quite light at the pole facing them, deep rust at the lopsided equator, darker still at the great expanses where it is suspected there was once ocean. Black clouds cleared, but within what remained great magnic storms doled out punishment as lightning.

It was almost as if it mocked the _Supremacy_. And no matter their true allegiances, it fueled the Knights, just as it fueled His Supremacy himself, and every officer he peered upon through his own Third Oyo.

The Knights closed their fists in one another around the laser bolts. Every primed cannon released its terrible ordnance, which gradually funneled there and hovered just under the titanic thing's belly.

It released in a ribbon no thicker than an ordinary lightsaber beam, disintegrating Net Station's giant obelisk as the "brothers" opened their fists. The beam kept going down, down, down, deeper than any junker had ever dug for treasure, or any primordial strip miner had ever gotten desperate enough to try. It sent hairline fractures along the world's crust, letting comatose tectonic plates come apart naturally as the crimson blade stabbed deeper. The magnic power of the world tried pulling the beam away, to shield itself, do anything to survive. It could do nothing.

Half-solidified internal magma boiled in an instant, expanding along those hairline cracks in the surface. Temperature difference raised new wind currents at a power even the oldest junker had never imagined in her most traumatic nightmare. Even if a moon-sized chunk of the world remained and was technically habitable, nothing from bacteria to the greatest subsurface Đraig would live that long when the air they breathed was burned apart at the molecular level.

Every one of these things, the "Father" and his "Sons" felt. They were compelled to share a twitch of the mouth as one, urged to expand it into a smirk as the core exploded, swelling like their collective smile as the Darkness fully claimed this place and it was removed from the grand system of the Light.

There came a point when they could see and feel no more, and their beings shrank back into their bodies.

That doesn't even touch on the hundreds of scattered voices crying out and suddenly silenced. It was a scream even in the black vacuum, heard in the back of every First Order officer's mind.

Luke Skywalker wished he had not been told to see this.

* * *

His first Master had felt something like it, a long time ago, the day before his death. Ironic, if that's what this was. But he had listened, and now he would deliver his message.

As a non-existent entity, he let himself expand further, touching the being that might have once been his nephew. His other students in that fleet would listen too, if so it was willed. But Kylo Ren was the one he intended to reach. With a hand that was not his own, he gripped the young man.

_Ben. Your mother wants you home._

The answer was just as quick.

_She's not my mother anymore._

And that was it. The Will of the Force had been carried out. It was no longer even his place to wait for other replies. Any other time, it might've suggested a mentor eager to embarrass his pupil in front of his friends. He even felt like that himself, if only a little.

The Hexect limped away with the guidance of its pilot to a blind spot in First Order sensors, possibly the only one: an asteroid just outside their inner sensory sphere. There a small carrier swallowed his stolen fighter and made its own running leap to a rendezvous point.

It was here that Luke was greeted briefly by the now-sullen extravagance of an old man who had saved his life more than once.

* * *

"Nothing?"

Luke shook his head and kept walking. The black hood and cape dared to suggest a silhouette Lando did not want to remember.

He did not walk to the bridge with his old "friend". Instead into the unknowable solitude of a hollowed-out back cargo hold, where he would meditate. But if the old gambler knew anything of the old Jedi's face, he would not be listening.

He'd seen that face on men gone to plead before a court. They didn't win often.

"I felt what they did to Jakku, too. We all did."

That turned Luke for a moment, already halfway down the darkening corridor but not gone. Only that terrible black shadow remained. He found himself praying for his old host's mercy without thinking.

The grayed blue eyes glowed through the darkness, stabbing into his soul.

"You didn't. You felt nothing."

End of discussion.


	9. Jakku: Delirious Dreams

Rey remained unconscious aboard the X-Wing throughout the entire battle. Artoo was a good fighter, and even better flyer, with the right modifications.

Not that Rey knew or cared about any of that. She was unconscious, should really be dead. She knew that too, though she could not guess how, beyond what little guiding Force junkers subsisted with.

The Force was not just the system created by living things - it _was_ the living thing, the whole system, the thing that allowed itself to keep living. It keeps its own balance by listening to the living, making connections.

The Force cannot do some things on its own. Thankfully it doesn't just listen.

It talks.

Some hear it. Not many, but a few. And these few draw their strength, forming a two-way relationship with the thing that gives them life.

Some choose to merely twist it to their will; the answer to Darkness is to balance it with the Light.

On places like Jakku, the relationship is more discreet.

Rey did not dream of the Force, but of something with a different name. At least, that's where it started.

* * *

_She had seen insects before, but never ones that glow with a soft _athul_. They covered her, she plucked them up and ate them like candies, and they made her glow too, from the inside out._

_She's a child. Not clad in the desert rags of a place whose every waking moment presses upon her whole body. She wears a brightly colored jacket, old and worn but not unusable in its old age. She hugs it around herself tightly, not knowing where she got it from but accepting it like a best friend. The idea of best friends is alien to her, as if people hold little meaning at her age. Not true at all in the majority of cases._

_It's all relatively new to her, this place. It's rocky, with sharper edges and deeper cuts than even the razor fields on Jakku. The sky is flat, almost blending with the craggy horizon._

_"It's not all like this," a boy calls to her from behind. She turns, wrapping the jacket tighter around herself as armor._

_She wants to smile, but smiling doesn't come naturally, and never will. And she has only the faintest of ideas who this is: some brill named Bill-or-something. Heh, Brill Bill! That evens her grin out just a little, and the boy reciprocates._

_"Just _Saolt_-true of us, there's a forest. Softer mountains far off, drawing shapes on the horizon like clouds." Two steps toward her, an outstretched hand._

_Everything's covered in a mist - scratch that, everything _is _the mist. None of it is completely solid._

_As she walks after him, the ground dissolves into the sky, and she falls upward into the hard floor. She cranes her neck to look down, seeing as it's up now._

_An old man gazes down at her. He's not even a man, though. He's a walking corpse in brown robes, shriveled to bone under several concealed layers of garments. With half a mouth he scowls, exposing throbbing muscle at the intact side of his jaw._

_With a voice like a gasp for air he speaks:_

_"Again, girl." She gets up, and he reminds her. "We continue this until you grasp it. No sooner."_

_She struggles to get to her feet. Given time, that weight pulling her down will feel like nothing. She misses her jacket._

_The girl faces the corpse._

_Reaches out her hand, fingers contracting around nothing. He goes flying against the back wall, arms flying out of their sleeves, wailing the best he can over the sound of stone walls cracking._

_But he doesn't._

_Nothing._

_With a flick of his fingers she's lifted against a stronger gravity than she's ever known: pushed down and now pushed up from below. She wonders if these magic powers can crush a person._

_He lets her hover there. The dream changes again as he releases his grip and the ceiling disappears. Almost like stepping off a moving vehicle, her feet catch the new floor. The walls were the same as the floor and ceiling, they could have been sideways and the room would be no different. Light washed in from nowhere, rollen and athul and vordin, throwing colorless flares in the shape of stars._

_This time there's no mistaking it for some other groné's memories, it's a message._

_A boy - a different one from that first brill - stares straight ahead, almost like a robot. He doesn't breathe, he rasps - almost exaggerated, like he's trying to imitate a man in a mask. All black robes, long brown hair._

_Without his oyos once turning to meet her own, he raises a gloved_ dedder_ over his right oyo, digs it into his skull. Blood trickles out of the wound as he traces it into the shape of the symbol þ. The scar will leave its outline around that oyo, and she will know him by it._

_He pulls his dedder free and it is dry. He curls it a time or two, she hears the rustling of fabric weave and metal._

_He speaks to her with the voice of an old man. It makes her hug herself against the cold, and the light._

_"Come home to your Family."_

_"I'm trying to find you."_

_A new voice._

_Nar._

_The first voice she had ever heard. It bounced from one ear to the other with every syllable, but the pressing pain it caused was like a tight hug wrapping itself around her._

_A women's voice._

Mother!

_"Be patient, my Daughter." And with the Phantom voice came a phantom woman. She was beautiful: pale and thin, white-haired, dark eyes, a wide and loving smile. This image is overlaid with the omnidirectional room where her Father delivers his message of love as well. She is a Force of another world to her child-self, floating above reality, infinite in her presence and motherly reach._

_"I'm trying," she repeats. "I'm really trying."_

_"Worry not. We will meet again, we will be a normal family. You'll be safe."_

_That's it. She wants to be safe._

_She wants to be..._

* * *

"..._safe._"

The voice that woke Rey and deleted memory of what she'd dreamt was grainy, transmitted over the X-Wing's comm system.

Hearing came first. Then feeling. She was in pain, and a lot of it. But she was not dead, as far as she could tell, and that was good.

Then came sight. She'd never seen space before sitting in this starship, and that's when she realized just how little she understood of the universe outside her punishing "home." It was dark, and infinite, and probably very cold. Some of that cold seeped in, though the silence seemed to be kept away by the machine noise of the ship.

And the voice she'd just heard.

"Who was that?"

The droid answered.

"_Flight control. We've arrived."_

"Where?"

"_Coruscant. Core world, center of free democracy in the universe, nasty place for agoraphobics and those afraid of basements."_

She didn't understand much of what that meant, simply waited for the droid to add whatever else he would say.

"_Republic territory, by the way. Luke should be meeting us soon, but for now we're about to enter its security sphere. Hold on te yer jorongos, groné, we'll be going down!"_

_Luke?_ Was that the brill who'd found her? Likely. Or had she already asked that of this droid? Had she asked _his_ name?

R2-D2. Artoo-di'itoo. The brill - Luke - had called him Artoo, that was it.

She did the best she could, searching for something to hold onto. But that's when her hand brushed the straps holding her, and realized it was like a ship's embrace. It would hold her firmly in place, protect her from turbulence. That being said, her next priority was rubbing her head.

And wait for this damned ship to touch down. Hopefully this Artoo was good with landings. And Luke with answers.

* * *

...

* * *

A/N:

Couple things. First off: shout out to Samaritan Prime for being the mad lad who's left a review for every chapter on this story and its predecessor, _She Awakens_. And yes, that's every single chapter. I counted.

Second, this is the end of the "Jakku" segment. Current plan is for four or five more segments like it, all more or less the same length. Hope you've enjoyed, because that means a short break and possibly working on other "stuff".

Third, what do any o y'all _bri_ know about the band Swans? Because that's the biggest chunk of music I've come to associate with this fic, and is all around good... I don't even know what genre/style you'd call Swans. Loud, maybe?

On that topic - would any of you be interested in a song rec or two to go with each chapter? Because music is a big impact on reading, and vice versa.

If so, great. If not, great.

Anyway, enjoy your day, enjoy your fanfictions, stay sane.


	10. First Interlude

To the average passenger, hyperspace is boring, bordering on madness. All a ship has to do in hyperspace is keep moving.

That means six bri and a droid stuck in one room with full view of the athul nothingness outside for several days' worth of travel. Before the hyperdrive, it would've been dozens of millennia from one side to the galaxy to the other, and equally boring for the entire time.

The junkers weren't big on talk, and the former Terries respected that. But after trying and failing to sleep in shifts, a tense discussion of their drainroom situation, and scrounging for the materials to slap a water condenser out of, talk became inevitable.

Each one aboard, save the droid, would have easily snapped another's neck if they had to stay in here much longer. To keep a bit of the madness away, the two human bri improvised a black shade to hang over the view port. Hyperspace has been known to inspire homicidal tendencies from time to time.

"Ye got any holos in yon droid?" Unkar suddenly prodded, pointing a thumb-shaped index dedder to Beebee.

_"No,"_ he replied. Only such that Poe and Finn could understand, and Finn was out. Poe glared up, almost delirious. He now wore his jacket over the mess of bandages covering his torso, almost bled completely through in three spots across his stomach.

"He says no."

"No need to say it twice, I 'erd 'im."

This actually got Poe's attention.

"You speak droid?"

"I weren't olways a Jakku brilljunker, boy." He held up the thing around his neck. Poe was in no mood or mindset to say, but he thought the brillblob was about to tell a sad story. Without the constant in-stream of xenophobic propaganda, he found himself wondering for the first time if he'd feel sorry for the alien - for anything other than merely existing, at least.

"Go on..."

"Were a holy man preaching hokey religion out on yon Rim." His thick dedders seemed to stretch like putty as he fondled the dimly glimmering crystal. His oyos seemed to be elsewhere than his own head.

On his bench along the small shuttle's port side, two of Unkar's alien companions slept. The third, one of the Teedos, fidgeted with an internal control panel. This third shot sparks to the floor, whacked the panel, and kept on working. No string of alien profanities meant it was the silent one.

"Thought t'were a good way to make creds, 'specially with that war on - Rebellion and all that. I went places most humans ain't never reached, too dirty and primitive, too suggestible to scams. Chief among them was this banch'a smugglers. Ended up making up a sermon they din't like, offended thei' better sen'bilitis."

"Oh, I like where this is going." A little wince of pain as exhausted muscle contracted around a wound. That forced him to lie back in place again.

"Oh, yar. Don grabbed me by min gerpin an' hauled me to a shuttle, dropped me from the sky onto that heap. Plenty-a junkers tell same story as yok."

That's explain it. Sad part is the fact that considering the cycle of junker-eat-junker, traditional population was simply unthinkable. Everyone comes from somewhere. The only natives on Jakku were those who survived the drop.

"Yon's how I end up here. And now we're gone again."

"Seems so." Short pause. "You said we're... following someone?"

"Yar. Someone very important. Someone wen't afford to lose."

"Yet you can't say where they're going, how you're getting there, or what you'll do when that happens."

Unkar shot him a glance, a tired one with one eye squinted almost completely shut. This might've been more talking than he'd done in so little time since... well, since Jakku. He himself had spent long hours not saying a word with Finn, just looking out at it all.

"A little silence'd do us good, wouldn't it?"

"P'rappy yar, p'rappy nar. Bat fer now, oll we'n do is wait."

And so they waited.

Beebee had seen them before. She had run away from them, used him as her excuse. So far they hadn't asked what the razordisk was doing trailing behind him. For now he would simply say nothing.

Outside, the athul-streaked universe blurred by, unseen and ready to incite insanity.

* * *

...

* * *

The last of the First Order fleet phased out of hyperspace into Starkiller system.

On a casual astronomer's readout, it was just a normal system: two parallel suns - "And the worlds between them." Starkiller, the larger and heavier star; and Juno, the name given to the dwarf across the system. The individual planets were stripped of their titles when the new tenants moved in, assigning phonetic values in their place: Wun, Too, Tree, Foar. Fife and beyond were just asteroids and unwanted balls of ice and gas, mostly for easy harvesting. The Empire had required resources from literally all over the galaxy to build a station the size of a moon, their whole fleet, all their armor, weapons and computers. No, the First Order was better than that, and that was what Starkiller Base was all about.

Due to the orbital system already in place before they arrived, only the inner midrange planets were properly habitable, though life grew on every one of them, all of it now safely under the control and protection of the First Order. Gas entities, two-legged giants, over-evolved insects. All of it served man.

The larger Star Destroyers, including the _Supremacy_ and its two now-whole Duonoughts, did not touch down, simply docked in the orbital ring circling Starkiller Foar. From there home carriers rounded up their officers and ferried them to stations on Starkiller Tree. Any Terror Troopers on board went to Foar, where only they could stand the less hospitable conditions. They also made for good wardens of the local ice-crawling slave horses.

The massive cities on Tree could wait for the Knights of Ren. Two Silencers launched from the ring and flew down to Foar, keeping their distance from one another. They broke the thin atmosphere and waited for the massive rollen continent to roll itself to them. From there, the golden spires of His Supremacy Snoke's palace were hard to miss. Gigantic thick-skinned creatures in labor collars climbed even to the top, assembling the skin of the skeleton building as we speak, panel by panel. Terries in black-hooded coats kept their guns trained on all of this at all times.

Making use of this incomplete space, the Silencers crawled in single file through a gaping hole in the webbed struts of the sphere-and-spike architecture. Serbris Ren led, and Kylo Ren followed.

Soon the air-exposed bones of the palace became the confines of a tar cave hidden in the rocks. Yet even as the walls closed in, the Silencers' foils seemed to curl inward on themselves, exactly as they were built to. There was no landing crew where they placed themselves, not even a lit pad. Yet with their Third Oyos they knew they'd planted their ships exactly where they needed to be.

The two climbed out. Now came the easy part: navigating the tunnels by feeling, and some of the change in echo from one place to another.

Kylo Ren did not have the patience for all this, test of patience though it was. His lightsaber flared to life, side-vents fuming in a moment more. Three blades.

He only needed one. A little flick with his thumb, the two smaller blades went silent and retracted.

The door was no longer any test of memory or guidance to find. It was right there, trickling a bit of water the construction Terries hadn't tapped down onto those about to enter. That, too, was probably some kind of test.

Two hands came up, two hands demanded the door open.

It did not. But they passed through.

This room was a shade of red - not rollen, red - Kylo could never place. Not just the floor but the walls, the ceiling. The light was a perfect blank color, only catching glints of gold and red of the room, throwing them to the Knight's oyos as four-pointed stars with a little rainbow in each arm.

Their Father was glistening almost beyond seeing, and he emerged from nowhere, his sharp-edged throne a part of his body. In this light his clothes seemed to melt into the heavy stone, impossible to tell where one color or texture ended and another began. His skin reflected no light, greyed, not human anymore, if ever there was an excuse for humanity anywhere in there. Of course, there had to be. He had to be a man, he had to epitomize the superiority of humanity, or purity, of perfection. The only species that would matter in the end. But he sure was a far cry from man in its traditional image. His sacrifice, some would try to justify it. To Kylo that didn't even matter. Just that he pretended to be his master. And would have a fury in whatever shriveled black muscle in his chest pumped his opaque blood.

"My Sons. Spires of the Order's crest." Sunken oyos poked out - like a bug's eyes, how pathetic is that - to the son on his left. The Interrogator. The kid in a big mask. "Open yourselves to Me."

They did as they were requested, and the barriers he had trained them to set up were dropped. These barriers were small, but made them insensitive to suggestion, strengthened their minds. Two deep breaths and their minds were His.

Their minds spoke directly to him. And he saw it all.

"You." He probed his other son's mind even as the accusation was made, saw what he needed to see. "You have... you have failed Me. Failed your family. Feel our shame upon you."

Any emotional shame he felt in the, say, two seconds before he was thrown from the ground to the red-crystal ceiling was overwritten on the physical level. And this pain defied traditional ability to feel. Not like the Interrogator's own methods, letting an existing thought and feeling tie to one another and grow into something unstoppable. What Kylo Ren was dull yet it stung, savored yet with the intensity of a single blow stretched out into millions. Any ability to scream was overridden by the clamping in his jaw and throat. His eyes were forced open by gigantic meaty fingers within his mask. So no, he could not tell more of how his Father promptly tortured him with the same skills he'd been taught.

Serbris dropped to the kneeling position, holding his lightsaber-pistol forward.

As this happened, he had something of his own to ask.

"Father."

"Yes, My son. Your weapon. Were it not for this louse, you would have earned it. Follow My instructions, your new weapon shall be waiting for you."

"Thank you, Father."

The Hunter got up, bowed, turned and escaped.

Leaving a Father to discipline his son.


	11. Gathering: Coruscant

The X-Wing touched down on Coruscant, one of the higher spires atop some grand castle among castles.

If this was the same Coruscant she saw in some of those holos, it'd certainly changed. Come to think of it, she'd seen some of the changes in everything. The Empire really liked pulling technology back, breaking it down into simple, oppressive edges and dark colors. An incomplete process, it turned the bottomless city below her into a patchwork of sleek curves and kaleidoscopic glass against razor-sharp prisms with few memorable features.

Not only that, but it was raining. It only ever rained when things were supposed to be somber. Coruscant was always the sunny, bustling world with no floor and no ceiling. Now she couldn't even see this world's Hel, which the occasional docu-holo had declared as the richest for human life. She didn't even know what a human was, except that she was apparently one of them. They had hair and skin, muscle and bone, two legs, dedders and a brain. So far that was all she could equate between herself and this big new world.

The lid of her cell came open and she was quick to stand up. Even quicker to be pulled down by soreness and the harness. What she had to wonder about was how that man had gotten that harness on her. Of course, that fell low on the list, but now it had a place.

Artoo wrote another message to her: _You know how to get out of one of those, don't you?_

_Didn't realize it was on me._

"Want to get kwak-too ahx-shti smogolo-ed? I'm sure your friend can tell you about that one."

_"He's dead."_

Beat.

_"Or, come to think of it, haven't seen him in years. Probably dead. Do you know how many times I've saved that clunky bastard?"_

_How nice. Even in death, he expects his companion to be grateful. The universe might not be that different from Jakku after all, hate to say it._

_Maybe this was all for nothing._

It was then she remembered to undo her harness. Her fingers kept fumbling, over and over and over again. Eventually she got it. A ladder hooked over the hull to the cockpit, and with that first clank it seemed her ears were opened to the whole grander world of great sounds. Engines, the alien patter of rain, wind, thunder, millions of speeders above and below. Some passed by the platform close enough to blow her hair all about. Had it come undone during the trip?

How long was she out?

She climbed down, and the rain assaulted her. She wondered if the cyclesuit would catch any of it, or would it leak out of every hole and drag what water she had left with it. Speaking of which, how long had she gone completely dehydrated? Crews in uniform _naran_ jackets craned the astromech droid out of the ship. The rain seemed to bounce off them at soft angles, almost forming an aura of warm air between them. Meanwhile she seemed to be a magnet for the wet stuff, and it was a strange feeling she wanted to relish forever.

One of the crew in a black mask and _amarillen_ helmet walked to her, tapped his helmet and began speaking. Judging by his voice she could tell two things: it was indeed a "he," and "he" wasn't human. Two legs, gloved dedders, a head and likely skin. No more.

He pointed to the tower this platform branched outward from. Multicolored guidelights blinked randomly, always light was on, some more powerful torches throwing shadows even on the thing they illuminated. A lightning strike somewhere far off threw the world almost to heavy Helover-light, devoid of darkness.

"You go inside. The Jedi will be with you soon."

"Jedi!?" The crewman nodded.

"Luke Skywalker. That's his droid, got ye here." He pointed to Artoo. "And!" His arm drifted upward. By the look of it, a big red box was falling from the sky. "They'll approach another platform, I - " Flash. Explosion in the sky. Lightning. Pause. "Think you should get inside. Go."

She wasn't in much mood to protest. She'd rather stay out here forever, letting this powerful sky wash over here for all eternity. But even the sky paled in comparison with the plans things seemed to have for her. Was it she who wondered that, or that little internal voice that seemed to be anyone's but her own?

Rey started walking. Didn't seem to be much option otherwise. "Inside" meant being out of the rain, but it also meant answers.

Still...

_Answers can wait._

_Nar, they can't._

The platform was far slicker a surface than she'd dealt with in a long time. Even metal hulls scored smooth by time had some grip to them. This place was polished, and wet. Fairly unblemished. Taking that fact in meant she no longer liked it quite the same. Too unfamiliar, and not in the good way. That being said, she was happy to be out this far, at least.

_Inside. Answers. Go now._

_Now!_

A transparent door slid off to one side and granted her entry. Inside the light was mostly gelden and stark-white. Supposed to be clean and calming, came out to her as something trying to hide panic just under the surface. Was this how people of the wider galaxy lived? Not that she

[REMEMBERED.]

The planet of thorns and rocks. Levitating. The deformed brill, the boys. The rest of it. A good chunk of that, at least, was just a dream. A promise.

Intuitively as she could, sopping wet from head to toe and relishing the sensation she hadn't felt in so long, if ever.

She slipped. It happened, she kept her curses to herself. She got back up silently, continued following that little curve of the hall forward and down, keeping the nearest window always in view.

That's when she remembered.

She didn't have her staff.

_Schet. Ti smogolo. Trakno toboi, soo'ka! Krii'kii!_ Dozens of others, most of which she'd enjoyed guessing at the meanings of.

_"Damn it."_

* * *

When Lando's carrier shuttle landed, none of them saw Luke leave until he was already walking off the platform into the tower. Lando didn't stop him, only looked on and shook his head in sorrow. He'd known him since he was a kid, he himself not much older in the grand scheme. Through a mutual friend, the old Rebel pirate...!

...rest his poor soul.

Luke, meanwhile, had to deal with the girl. The grona, groné or whatever the word was. If she was here, that was bad. But also unavoidable. Destiny, or whatever passed for it these days. "The Will of the Force." Against what disciplines he had he wanted to scoff.

He needed to talk to Leia. He hadn't been back here for a while, but this is where the action was for one of the Republic's senior diplomats. Especially with her major role in the ever-busy tribunal.

Girl first. Sister later, as soon as possible. He didn't want her to suffer alone. Of course, neither did he. Even in this faraway galaxy, "misery craves company."

He found her wandering the halls, drenched from head to toe, tracking black-flaked water across the carpet, eyes wide and torn between scowling and smirking in admiration. Something about that made him want to smack sense into her, and he choked that down. He was a Jedi, no testimony or memory of pain would interfere with that. She looked up when she saw him and any semblance of smile disappeared.

"My staff." His eyes narrowed, if only a little.

"You're not getting that back. Follow me." He turned, and she followed, head spinning from one side to the other, taking it all in. The art, the structure, the lighting, the busy world outside. Platforms like her own were scattered everywhere like branches on a tree, impossible and seemingly impractical but somehow not so much as scraping on the traffic of countless speeders and all altitudes, of the lightning in the distance. The system here was hard not to see. The delicate balance somehow made commonplace.

Eventually narrow halls and large windows faded into sharp-angled staircases. The robed old man turned into what might've easily been a... what was the word? Closet. But behind each thin closet door was a dark passageway Rey was sure they were not supposed to know about.

She had questions. She didn't ask.

She would correct that mistake, no matter how little she wanted to talk.

"This is Coruscant. You're a Jedi Knight. You're..."

"Luke Skywalker. Son of Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader. Enemy of the Empire and the First Order, hero of the Rebel Alliance, destroyer of the Emperor and the Death Stars. And yes, a Jedi Knight. Anything else you need to know can wait. Right now we focus on reaching our destination."

And so they did. Rey got the feeling he didn't like her very much, go figure. Still, he knew plenty she didn't. And, if she was lucky, she knew things he didn't know. Of course, she knew little of the world beyond nomads declaring war every time they crossed paths. And Luke definitely knew about the holos...

What happened to Jakku? And why? She wanted to ask of Charlie, Beebee and their mission. In the end she was fully invested but knew only what that verbose droid had told her before dying. And the mooks proved its importance. All of a sudden she's here with a Jedi, a figure from those times, presumed dead when they turned their backs on the Republic forever.

Puzzling. She didn't like puzzles, hated not knowing. She needed to know who her Family were: Father, Brother. _Mother._

The thunder echoed powerfully, even on the colorless stone. It rang in her ears like the roar of so much turbolaser fire, so many godly engines.

Down more stairs. She'd forgotten stairs existed for the longest time, that they were simple machines to ease the stress of terrain going up and down. She had to crouch to avoid taking a low-hanging chunk of ceiling to the head, and that was fine with her. This place almost felt like an abandoned ship, and despite everything she hated about Jakku, she liked that. Like the rain, which even now made little sloshing noises in her boots, made her shiver. What an amazing feeling it really was!

Not many lights, and the ones she saw seemed old, not just bordering on relics. Certainly not what she'd call "antique," either. It was like someone had cut this whole center of the building out of a single stone, chiseled away, left some lines of old liquid paint and wired in some torchlamps. All very crude, all very secret, no-nonsense. Spoke volumes if she was reading it correctly, she couldn't tell.

The old brill - Luke - finally brought a door open. It squealed, as if scared of him. She knew that feeling too. The sound of a hundred species in one place. Oh, the noise! It pained her. Physically. The noise, the light, the crowd, the untouchable heat given off by _so many living beings!_

"Keep up, move quickly." She nodded, hunching her shoulders and crouching forward as they advanced without realizing it. The weight of her staff in her hand was really not helping the situation, the thing was like a talisman to her.

Dozens of species, most of which she'd never seen before. Some humans, not many. The kind of dress she saw on greedy Federation bastards and Imperial "heroes" all around her. Most did not seem to see her, she kept her eyes on the crimson carpet. Crimson carpet that seemed to follow her with gelden rings like oyos.

She had the slight urge to grip the back of the brill Luke's robe, though she was certain he'd brush her hand off and tell her to keep walking.

_You can get through this, you can get through this._

_You've been through so much worse, perpetrated surely by much scarier "people."_

_But never this many. Those thugs for whatever-gangs-or-factions came in waves, choked by narrow hallway and diversion. Never like this. Flesh gangs rarely had more than a dozen members, even that's a stretch._

_How does anyone survive crowds!?_

_Something about war. War is worse here. I don't know how, but the violence here is the heart of all violence. All Darkness. All Evil. Whatever Evil is._

She hadn't seen many crowds, except those that tried to kill her. She didn't care much for them even now, even actively detested these things for standing so close in such a large space, rendering it ever smaller.

Rey didn't know when, but they came out of it. She looked up.

Scratch that, they hadn't come out of it. Luke was standing to one side, showing her a door. A big silver thing with several concentric ovals stretching inward, darkening. She couldn't see what was on the other side, but it opened. Inside, surprise surprise, a smaller room. She hadn't seen a turbolift in a while, but she got the feeling that's what it was.

Luke was trying to tell her something. She couldn't hear. Too much noise. Too much to focus on, all of it painful, building on itself in sharp, heavy layers. Lightly frustrated, he held up several dedders by his chin - between his throat and his old-bearded mouth. Suddenly he spoke, and it transcended the air. Spoke directly to her mind, almost as a whisper above any din. She might hear the voice from thousands of worlds away. It was an effect almost like her Family's call...

"Take this up, a droid'll show you to guest quarters. Don't let anyone in until I come up."

She nodded, just happy it would mean the end.

The door slid shut - sideways again, closing her off from that horrible noise! Some of it stayed behind with she and the silence. The almost physical onslaught, the whispering of disembodied bats. Evil things. Things with gelden oyos. Still, she sighed that it was over. Follow the droid, find the place. It might even be a place of her own, from the way he talked. Don't accept any visitors. No need to tell her twice, a visit is a declaration of war.

_Unkar visited you, found you broken in the wreckage. He declared war by taking you._

She hoped never to see Unkar again. That he burned along with Jakku - yar, she'd suddenly realized that Jakku was no more. He and Wiles and those Teedos. Even in her indefinite sleep she could feel that tingle as it all went up. The pain, she could relate well enough to the pain. That had been somewhere in the dream as well.

Suddenly she remembered that... she could not remember much. Of the dream. If anything. She couldn't remember if she woke up even realizing she'd dreamed, certainly not now. So much in so little time, all of it seeming to flow unexpectedly into everything else.

The door opened. Time to exit. Find a droid. She wondered if she was good at finding droids. And bad at people.

* * *

The noise wasn't easy for Luke to handle, either. A Jedi's attuning to the workings of the universe sometimes got muddled when he was listening in on too many channels. Too many strong minds. From what he understood, most Jedi developed the nasty habit of keeping to themselves, separated from the worst of the crowds. Wasn't easy to understand why. They could feel the pain of an entire planet erased in an instant, imagine that in comparison to bickering politicians of a hundred worlds in a lobby meant for the small trickle of delegations. How she stood it he had no idea.

_Leia. Leia, where are you?_

_I'm coming. Stay where you are. And watch out for the - !_

No need to tell him. He found himself stepping forward abruptly as some very large and very hairy alien with a skull the size of his torso brushed behind him, vocalizing niceties at an octave below Luke's lowest register. While he was sure even old Jedi knew little of the practice, careful tuning to the Force could sometimes double a speaker's vocal range in volume and pitch. Old Ben had used that once, on some nasty Tusken raiders. Now he was almost to the age Old Ben was, and it saddened him.

"Luke."

His sister found him, and together they guided each other in walking. A little nudge here or there, they all moved out of the way. Luke grinned a little, mocking disapproval.

"You've never stopped me from doing that before."

"Never wanted to. But..."

"Jakku?"

He nodded. "It... it burned. I wasn't supposed to stop it."

Somewhere between a raised eyebrow and an empathetic grimace. She felt it when it happened, too. She could only imagine what he had to go through, and even saying that was a stretch. She could do nothing here, she had no power. Alderaan, that was the closest she could get, but even then it was a statistic, an untrained impulse. He'd spent his whole life attuning himself to the most minute feelings, just to get hit with that same onslaught. So no, words would not do. Still, he'd always appreciated the gesture in the past. The being-out-there.

"I'm sorry." Suddenly his sister's hand was on his left shoulder. With a black-gloved hand that had been his own for a long time now, he covered it in his own. They moved almost as one through the last of the smugly-dressed bureaucrats who in the end were of no importance. They found somewhere they could talk, one on one: an exposed balcony with a slick tile floor. With a nudge between them the water droplets slid off their clothes and left nothing behind. The air between them was an impenetrable hall of perfect audibility. The thunder faded to background music, and Luke almost swore he could hear something else in there, something more melodic. More terrifying.

The audible emanations of the Emperor's touch.

Leia heard it too. Sure cast a shadow over everything here for them, but this world was important, could not be given up.

Luke had to speak. Leia needed to let him.

"Tell me everything. Leave out what you must, we haven't got that long."

"Trial?" She nodded.

"Moving forward, exactly as planned. Thete's no doubt she did it, the only question is what to do with her now that we know." She'd caught that little attempt at diversion even as she explained in as few words as she could. "But you're not getting it out of this so easily. Spill."

He sighed.

"We were almost there, Leia. I _was_ there, it all drew me there, to that station. And... I found _her." _He did not need to tell her who. "She's the one that helped send that signal burst. She... fought off everything she was up against, was already dead when I found her. A little Push, not much more than Old Ben gave me, and she survived a ride with Artoo all the way back up there, then again to here."

Leia kept her face tight as possible. Reaction would come later. Listening was now, that's what it demanded with Luke. She nodded again to him: "Go on."

"I saw the Terror Troopers. _They're wearing his face like a trophy, Leia_. Not just that, they're building them like him, too."

Now she had to ask something.

"Did you do anything?"

"I couldn't. I didn't reason with Darth Vader, I begged my father to save my life. They were in front of me, and I put them down. Just like that. I stole one of their fighters and made life difficult as I could for their fleet until...

"They were there. The Knights. Snoke was breathing down their necks the whole time. Their General, the Hunter, Ben. I could feel where they'd all walked through that base. And up there over the planet they trapped me until I got that message: that I couldn't stop it. But I stayed behind long enough to reach him, Leia. I know he received the message."

"Anything more?"

He shook his head. Then nodded, correcting himself like feeble old fool he was becoming all too quickly:

"The girl. I felt it in her, too. I was almost there, reliving some of the things she'd done to get them there. We suspected Jakku was a place like that, yes. But even then the Darkness was alive in her, it was keeping her going. Almost like the Light was its shadow, instead. That's the only reason she's still breathing, and she's currently finding quarters two floors above us!"

"There has been Darkness in every Jedi to ever live. In you and me, too. We also know some of what she's been through, even if she doesn't. And that'll change soon - she's seen you again."

"It's all part of His plan and you know it. Snoke. The timing of all this, think about it."

"I have. And I'm quickly deciding that one way or another she's back in your care, and we're surrounded on two sides by forces that can overtake us in an instant if we let them. One's run by Darkness, the other's the same Empire as always, we have a General being charged with treason and one of the major levers in pushing us here has been brought down again. Potential for anything, Light or Dark. Same as everyone else in this galaxy. The universe, even."

The siblings drew in close for an embrace, both a little lost in their roles but impossible to be torn away from them. Right now, they might as well be all each other had. Save maybe Lando and Artoo, had they not been subject to neglect in their older ages. That was becoming the way of things, leaving the outdated behind but never fully investing in the new. The Empire for its mad tactics, the First Order for its flashy toys and disregard for life. The Republic in forgetting its heroes.

"We'll get through this. We always have."

* * *

Two levels above, Rey was enjoying the silence in the newfound safety of a room to herself - a room with a view, like every other room. The droid had known exactly what she meant and guided her to yet another door. She had no idea what they kept these places for but that meant little.

The Darkness spoke to her now, in the faux-soothing tones of an old man dead now for almost thirty years. She'd never had a room to herself, never even as a child. She was always moving, but now she could move no more.

She stripped. Without any sense of traditional embarrassment, more a kind of attachment to her clothes, and lack of interest in seeing all her body had been through. Taking off the cyclesuit did allow her to better assess its damage, and she was afraid yet another Frankster patch-job would only plug the holes she saw, not the ones she knew she couldn't. In disappointment she tossed them in a heap to the - you guessed it - carpeted floor.

Without meaning to, she found scars. A lot of them. Her arms, hands, stomach, a little unnatural curve of several twice-broken dedders. Gelden-red scabs totaling to an area the size of her open hand around her stomach and right leg. She knew better than to touch these when she found them. A bit of dried blood, nothing serious.

Heh.

Nothing serious.

She remembered now that she should've been dead, too. All these wounds, had they been sustained in one attack there would be no question. Time had let things reset how they would, and she had pressed on. Pressed on even now, and would until the day she died.

Distortedly, almost like watching a holo, she felt some this place's scars in the back of her skull. Mutilation. Murder, bordering on genocide. Deception. No witnesses. Immolation. The forging of the bloodiest regime in thousands of years. Yet it was still here. It still rained outside, and she still saw it. It was beautiful, she knew that.

She'd never thought about people as beautiful. It was something for places, for feelings. She'd never had much time for those ideas on Jakku, but from time to time...

But people. People weren't beautiful, they were savages. Their scars were always visible, hideous to look at, and they passed them on tenfold to everything else in the wilderness. She'd received it, and she'd dealt it. Hence, couldn't be beautiful.

Jakku was beautiful in an ironic way. Its death had probably been beautiful.

She was tired, she knew that. She also wondered if her Family were beautiful. Probably not, no one in this galaxy was. Then again, they were never really _of_ this galaxy.

Rey had to reiterate. She was tired, and needed to sleep. Try to forget her staff was gone, that this was a world she'd never seen before, that Charlie and probably Beebee were dead, and she had no answers.

She would not sleep in her cyclesuit. She would not let herself either, she was sure of that. The cyclesuit still handled that well enough, at least. Still naked, she crawled under heavy sheets and pretended they were Mother's arms, Father's arms, Brother's arms.

She'd seen Father and Brother before. Brother recently.

But the thought abandoned her just they did - just as she abandoned the waking world, and had the easiest sleep in her life.


	12. Gathering: Suffer Not the Child

Kylo Ren left His Supremacy's chamber with no shortage of blatant haste. No featureless mask could hide his anger, and that was just how the Supreme Leader wanted it. Let him keep simmering.

His quarters were elsewhere on the icy planet, deep in one of their fortresses at a depth most did not know about.

There wasn't much to his room. Just a mat on the floor, a stand, a holo-projector. Given the largest broadcast station in the galaxy was just destroyed, he'd not use that for much recreation.

He took off the stupid mask. More like threw it against the wall nearest him, putting the Force of a Third Arm behind the throw, and another voice atop his own scream.

"Master Ben, you _know_ I cannot stand it when you - "

Kylo Ren turned at the mention of his name. His wrong name. The one that, even now, he rejected. One arm was up, and he wanted the gelden droid to suffer.

But no matter how his dedders twisted, how his hand shook, it would make no difference. The protocol simply stood there, stupid grated oyos wide as ever, that prissy little dome of his not banged up nearly enough to the Knight's liking.

"Ren. Kylo Ren. You will address me as such." He drew his lightsaber. Ignited the first blade. The crossguards followed, and he raised the crimson flames to the old protocol droid. He'd been created when his own grandfather had been born, or so some stories went. The poor rusty bastard himself certainly couldn't, not with all the memory wipes to make him forget what he'd seen. The early battles of the Trade Federation, the Clone Wars, the war against the Empire. A retelling of the life of his grandfather, completely forgotten. Even to a brill no stranger to the Order's views on history, that was an atrocity. A suffering. All that gone because of maintenance, because of the need to keep quiet.

But no. He lived on. As Terror Troopers. As the Knights of Ren. The entirety of the First Order. They preserved, and they advanced. The galaxy was just too stupid not to resist. Or so they claimed, and it was partially true.

"You've forgotten who you were. If you want to live, you'll remember who you are."

The blade just kept humming. Nar, screaming. It was yelling for blood. Metal. It threw rollen stars against the shiny gelden frame, and the occasional spark shot out to grab a flake of metal or two.

He moved the blade a little closer.

Flustered, but without stutter, afraid to raise his vox again: "Master B - ... Master Ren, I really must protest this treatment. I simply wish to ascertain what I'm to do for you, that's all."

He moved the blade _just a little closer._

Pulled it away. He'd left a mark on the droid, silver flakes and some deeper, grimier discoloration. With that he deactivated the lightsaber and waited for the wild blade to die. The crossguards went first, the long rollen blade lost its fire and retreated inward to the hilt. Disappointed.

He said not a word to the droid. Not right away, anyway. He did not move, and the protocol droid was scared to do so first.

Finally, Kylo Ren spoke.

"Get me some tea. And deliver a message to Voskr." That stupid little wave of his stupid little arms.

"Oh, right away! And... what is the message you want me to deliver, Master Ren?"

"I'll tell you when I send you out. Tea. Now."

C-3PO half-nodded, half-bowed to the latest in his family of masters, and shuffled away with the numerous little squeaks and clanks of fast-moving metal feet.

In the meantime, he dropped his lightsaber to the floor, uncaring. If anything would destroy it, he'd simply rebuild it with a few more spare wires. And if the cracked crystal flared up and burned him, he'd rebuild it again.

He hated the First Order. Snoke. Serbris Ren. Hux, the "General." Hated them all.

Well, not all of them.

The girl. He didn't know what she'd call herself, if she even had a name. He should've felt her. In the end he did, but not soon enough. Almost like the whole world was laying false tracks, obscuring the animal that had walked the trail. And when he'd seen that forever-damned Hunter try to lay harmful hands to her...

It was his mistake. And he'd paid the price. Just as they would for existing. For tormenting him. Her. Tormenting the whole galaxy since the time the Red Sith could throw sticks, and the galaxy could toss them back. All of them, suffering as their victims had suffered. That was vengeance he would witness, when the time came.

He looked down at the lightsaber. Two of the external conduction coils, meant to shave off excess heat into a wider field, had come loose. He picked it up, and with a casual stroking of two fingers to the air, righted them. Secured them back in their fasteners with a _clik_.

The idiotic droid was back, tray in hand. If he'd been on a schedule, he was right on time.

"Your tea, Master Ren. Might you tell me of your message now?"

Kylo Ren looked up, grabbed the tray from a distance and bringing it to rest on the floor. He didn't want to touch the antique.

"Tell him to meet me outside the Noulr'Isht gates at Heldown. His usual attire."

"Yes, Master Ren. Right away!" And he scurried off out the door. For a droid, he radiated terror and frustration like a beating _corazor_.

Kylo waited until he was gone to kneel forward and pick up the cup. Lifted it to his mouth and took a tentative sip. It scalded, just as it was supposed to. He gulped it down. Again. Again. His throat burned, but by the end he could hardly feel any of it.

_Why am I doing this?_

The little voice inside was not his own.

_You're to suffer, that's why you're here. And in the end, if my promise remains true, you'll be rewarded for it, and the rest of the galaxy will, too: with a peace greater than any First Order rule, any Republic, any Empire. You will be Mine. Go towards it, My Love._

He nodded omnidirectionally. Stood up. He was not trained in the ways of timekeeping, so he looked on a First Order 30-cycle clock. Heldown soon.

He picked up his broken mask and threw on the cloak. Keeping up appearances, after all.

* * *

...

* * *

Snoke took more visitors in the next day or two. A Terror Trooper escorted Fieldmarshal General Armitage Hux to a meeting with His Supremacy, and he accepted them into his mostly featureless throne room. What would follow was a greater punishment than Kylo's invisible pain.

The corpse's breathing was somehow heavily labored, yet completely nonexistent.

"Ah, General, My Son. And another of my trusted Sons: the sturdy Terror Trooper!" He leaned in close, taking special note of the black armored figure, the assorted mechanical elements fusing flesh to machine. This Trooper, however, seemed to be one of the lower levels, not outwardly augmented that one would know. But the staller and visil were the same, it would appear as a frightening reminder of what was, what would be restored.

"Thank you, you may go." He mouthed something else without voice, a tricky feat with only half a whole mouth:

He mouthed _Voskr, my most trusted Son._

The Terror Trooper made its exit discreetly, would listen to the rest from outside. But it had places to be.

His Supremacy Snoke keyed in a command in his throne. Now, straight to the point.

"General. I wish to inform you that you have outlived your usefulness. You will be relieved of command shortly."

This was transmitted as raw audio feed to closed comm circuits from Wun to Juno. However, some things simply cannot be carried as waves, especially not with the recent destruction of a place with such a purpose. Such as the sudden shock and confusion in Hux's eyes.

This is what the whole system will hear:

_"Father, I don't understand. Why?_

_The corpse laughed, more a rush of air than anything. But it was genuine amusement he felt._

_His Supremacy checked the readouts on his oversized stone chair again: everyone was hearing this._

_"Because I said so, child. Your authority has been relished by the Order, but you were never permanent."_

_The normally wide mouth and thick lips became a trembling line holding back sickly rage. The Supreme Leader kept going._

_"You were never a permanent fixture, My Child. Always, the Inner Spires of the Order have been called so for a reason, but most are of the Third Oyo, and it is they who will inherit the universe. In the Grand Scheme of that, what are you, my Son?"_

_Oyos clamped shut for a moment. Oh, what a child he still was!_

_"Your Brothers will be taking control from you over the Order, as will I. You've served us well, Armitage."_

_Now, as a child, he lashed out through tears, clenching shaking fists as the center of his world denied him._

_"Don't do this! No, I won't have it. I am Fieldmarshal General of the First Order, that's what you made me!"_

_"And I can unmake you. I am Supreme. Your Supreme Leader. Father to my children in the First Order. You are but a child to me."_

No one would say why, for no one knew him, but a masked Terror Trooper harbored a hate in his corazor for the rebuke being broadcast through every speaker in the whole system. He cared not for either of them much.

It was around the time the Supreme Leader started displaying his powers in audible fashion that Terry turned out. He began walking away from the nearest amplifier and down the corridor, staying close to the darkness when he was closest.

If a group of the enhanced soldiers were to pass nearby, he would slip in, pretending to be one of the Vader lookalikes. He wore the same armor, sure, and remained anonymous, because the Terries were so easy to become anonymous with. Because it suited him, simple as that.

He had a meeting to reach. He made it there, keeping himself to himself and keying the airlock code to open the inner door, close, open outer door, step outside.

From here, Starkiller fumed red through the clouds. Whatever ice could crystallize became biting shrapnel carried sideways by wind and tossed about.

The other mask of a Knight of Ren greeted him. Kylo Ren. A blackened cape wanted to billow, but buckled under its newfound weight in that stabbing current of cold air.

And it was Kylo Ren who spoke first, modulated, distorting a young baritone into an old, mechanical contrabass:

"We move soon."

Silent.

"We have to retrieve the girl. _You_ have to."

Silent.

"That fool's finally getting what's been coming to him. And soon they'll all get what's coming to them."

"I am aware" the other Knight replied. "He is not our Father."

Kylo Ren nodded.

"Serbris can't harm her. Make sure of that."

Nod.

"Good. We may have time yet. Keep your ear low, keep it open."

Nod.

"We're doing the most important thing this galaxy has ever needed."

Slowly, drawling, Voskr Ren replied: "I know."

* * *

...

* * *

A/N:

Imma back. With questions I'm curious to hear responses on, no less:

Music. Y'all music fans? Nine Inch Nails, Swans, Cryoshell, Hildur Guđnadóttir, heard of any of those? That, plus some select Star Wars tracks by John Williams, and rearrangements. And choral music. If you want to try experiencing the story as I try to write it, I suggest giving a listen.

And if not, I'm curious to know what the music of this fic is to you. What do you think of as you read it? Is it Gothic? Really flashy and modern? Big, grand? Small and intimate? More sci-fi and hi-tech, or more mystic and fantasy? These are the real questions, people, and I've got more!

Accents. I've started to fancy meself a linguist, and for better or worse it's really bleed through, from First Order vocabulary reforms to some Chiss stuff you'll see later. On that topic, how do you hear the accents of the reimagined/original characters?

For example, let's say this Rey has some combination of Welsh and Russian accents: a reluctantly sing-songy, ultimately forceful way of speaking with lots of stressed syllables and punchy consonants. I don't know why, but it seems to fit. Of course, everyone has their own preferences. And really, I'm curious to hear thoughts on these subjects.

That, and this is still fun to write. Some surprises waiting later on, I think. And bloodshed. Thank you to all still reading, you're my motivator to get things done.

Stay safe, stay sane.

XÞ


	13. Gathering: Second Greatest

Coming out of hyperspace landed the stolen First Order shuttle squarely in Republic space, maybe three inhabited systems from Coruscant. No way they could get any closer with those identifying marks on their hull. Anyone in Hosnian system would be sure to tell you, there's only one greater ghetto than Hosnian, and it's not far. Ghetto meant crime, isolation. And people willing to keep dirty secrets for the right price.

It also meant dirty spaceports, a fair bit of decay setting in around old docking pylons, the simple brackets that hardly hinted at the loads they bore. Metal that shouldn't rust was discolored almost as gangrenous flesh, and a wall of the stuff greeted the junkers as they disembarked. Wiles threw his central arm to his face in surprise. It'd been a while since he'd seen anything not sandblasted, heard anything not drowned by howling wind.

The sight was certainly an oppressive one: multilevel docking pylons holding dozens of ships each in loose grips, scattered just almost evenly across a crowded landing field, open clamp branches marked by rollen blinkers. Half of the image was blurred by the never-ending ins and outs of moving ships ranging from personal speeders to freighters with crews up to five-hundred.

"_Ayy, p__yijexa!_" shouted a Teedo, whistling in a grand arc that Poe followed all the way down, cringing and trying to put a name to the note. He struggled to sit up, but made it. Finn saw him struggling, heard the frustrated grunts, and ran over best he could to help his partner up.

"Thanks," Poe responded. "How bad is it out there?"

"Oh, it's bad. Wouldn't be surprised if the whole planet was a big landing field."

"Now this I gotta see," he muttered, cynical, and winced. "A little more support would be nice."

"You're not light, you know." A chuckle.

"Oh, I do." A painstaking shuffle-step, another wince of pain, sharp intake and exhalation. The minimal and obsolete Terry medical training was equivalent to little more than nothing. It might've saved Poe's life from a puncture wound, if only for a little while, but it sure made it impossible to tell where to hold him up by.

But they reached the open bay door.

"Damn. Sure this is a planet? Looks like - " Labored breath. " - A shipyard station."

"Indeed 'tis. Hosnian, second-greatest slum in the Republic," Unkar answered.

"And what's the first?" The oversized junker shot a narrow-eyed look to them. And did not answer.

"We climb down on yon ladder. Once we reach the ground, stay close. Bad things to loners here, less they the bad kind."

"Like us?"

"Worse. Much worse."

"It will be good to be rid of this ship, though," Wiles commented passively. "And into something flashier!"

The Teedos went first, more jumping than climbing to the several deck layers spaced oddly between wide ladders. If they saw someone on the same deck, the Silent flashed an obscene universal gesture while the talkative one spat out a breathless string of ancient curses.

"Or at least something with proper bedding," Wiles lamented. "It's been too long."

"Eh, shaddap. We git sumtin', we go fer it."

"Right."

Again, the Teedos ran on ahead and downward, yelling any concerning figures - everyone - away. They were almost to the ground, and the smell greeted them in earnest. A powerful stench of over-processed or else undercooked food, various fuels and strong exhaust. Not to mention the body odor of thousands in a space optimized for dozens.

"Now I gotta wonder," Finn panted, Poe slung 'round his shoulder. "How do you know this place?"

He was leading their little cluster when they reached the ground, swaggering the only way his build allow him. He turned, scowling. Even more.

"You don't remember any of you I tell ye, didje?" As one person with arms linked, Finn and Poe shrugged.

"Bunch of words over a conversation piece," Finn countered. "Doesn't mean anything."

Poe nodded into Finn's shoulder - most likely agreement.

"Reck'n not, then." With that he turned and kept them moving, shoving his way through whatever blank alien faces they passed. Whatever he couldn't get through, he motioned for the Teedos to take care of. So many faces, all of them seeming to blend with one another. Some of this, to the humans, was some of the old and very stubborn indoctrinations: "All aliens are the same."

Except, in this case, even the alien junkers could see it: the almost uniform drab clothing, desaturated complexion and droning look in their faces. They all seemed to mix in with one another, no matter their size or shape, moving in or out or just about. Even the few scattered humans they saw seemed to demonstrate this. The effect didn't seem possible, yet here it was. One could only try to wonder something more intense than this monotony. Hosnian had a uniform.

"Gotta wonder just what they're doing here."

"Whole lot ta nathin', yon's sure. Nathin' ta do, anyhow. Now, shaddap and look fer some brill need'n rid of a spaceship."

"_Aaagh. Wahzhda, bokka soo'ka!_"

It was one of the hooded faces they passed that answered:

"_Y shokka-nigli-ngoch tvei, debil nagka'i!_"

Both Teedos zealously objected to the insult on their grandmother's alleged intelligence. Finn had wondered just how fast the little _grimlini_ could move. No more.

* * *

Some few hours later, which felt like forever, landed Unkar sitting across a table from some even bigger, fatter boss with a cleft lower lip separated by a cluster of wiry tusks, compound oyos and sunken ears. Watching him talk made Poe dry-heave onto the fake wood.

Funny thing was, one of the boss's goons had picked Unkar out of a crowd at least thirty deep on any side, reached into the crowd and cleared a path for them to follow. That led to a hut which led to a tunnel which led to an empty alley which led... Finn couldn't remember.

Unkar was fiddling with that crystal around his neck again. It shone a faint blue when the boss raised a light-pointer to it, apparently confirming its authenticity.

"Sooittisyeaafterall, soonofablaastadaamnedKraayt" he somehow managed to drawl and still blend the syllables into one. His lower lip - both of them, flapped about, a bloated tongue visibly wiggling his overgrown tusks. Finn wasn't far from joining Poe, who was having his shirt ripped open and his wound sprayed lightly with alternating coats of unknown elixirs and painkillers. The alien nurse tsk-tsked at him without meaning.

"Yar, 'tis I. What brings yer operation out dis far?" A wide gesticulation, seeming to catch the whole planet in open arms. He did not seem to have elbows.

"Eexpaansion! Eexpaansionbegooodfaabusinees, Unkar. Notoonlythat, buuttheRepaablicmakesfahgreeaatnegleectofitssyystems! Wecancoomeinwhereeverwewaant, taakeoverwhateeverwewaant. It'safreegaalaxytheesedaays."

The effect was just as dizzying for Finn to hear. Alien speaking certainly twisted Basic in ways it was not meant to be twisted, because it was a language that didn't serve them, it originated serving humans. Why couldn't this whole galaxy be human!?

But that was no way to think anymore, not if they were going to survive. He kept straining to listen, couldn't help but be drawn away when Poe grunted and the alien nurse was trying to stand him up.

"Hey, I can help you with that," he announced. The medic nodded, and together they hoisted Poe up by the shoulders. He followed their eyes and head as they nodded towards the door into another room. An oyostalk over the doorway gyrated down to them, blinked twice. It lifted for them, and they walked through.

The last thing Finn heard before the door shut behind them was "Iitisgoodtohaaveyebaack, Unkaar."

Poe woke from his latest _shjester_ with more than a groan - but a scream. His spine folded and he shot up. The nurse immediately raised overlong arms to hold him down, and nodded hurriedly for Finn to do the same.

"I need to sedate him!" It was a hermaphroditic voice that made Finn's skin crawl, but what was that when his partner was suffering? Poe's eyes needed a moment to open, like he was a newborn baby birthed on this table, and unwilling to accept the pains of life just yet. He'd be accepting the pains of death if he didn't get the wound properly treated, though, and Finn couldn't have that.

"AAAAAAAAAGH!"

His response, hurling himself across his friend's torso the second he went down: "POE! SHUT THE HEL UP AND CALM DOWN!"

The stubborn brill heard, then listened.


	14. Gathering: Počji and Clarity

Фэлэм'пирос'алʝлłóдо (Transliterated: Felem'piros'alyllódo: Fel Empire.)

In Chiss space, some AUs from capital world Csilla.

The _Pellaeon_ was birthed from the hyperlane alone, and was greeted immediately by Clawcraft escort wings lying in wait.

The Zabrak Underadmiral watched from the Bridge.

_"Wing Odin-Shjest to_ Pellaeon:_ convoys in motion, cleared for approach formation Zed-Tovan. Respond."_

_Would he sacrifice this squadron, too? All of them? Oh, he probably would, the decrepit old Blue Man. How many thrown to the dogs before he finally turns over to someone else?_

_Of course, who'd make those decisions then? Another Chiss, one who strolls up and thinks he owns the place. Or would it..._

"Received, Odin-Shjest commander. Zed-Tovan, disperse."

_"Copy, out."_

The cause for the special formation was a stray asteroid cluster - "convoys," they called them. Unpredictable, answered to no one. And until all ships cleared orbital defenses in perhaps an hour, they were simply an obstacle. To be avoided and dealt with accordingly. Part of life in Chiss space.

Tore retreated to her commander's chambers, in the hopes of getting some answers, or at least somewhere away from the people for a time. It was a person - who, strangely enough, she was headed toward right now - that she wanted to let loose her anger on.

"Admiral," she began coldly, knocking only once on his door. Simply barging in, even now, would be pushing it too far. Too much, and certainly too dangerous.

The door opened, and she stepped through, throwing as brief a salute as she could and earning herself a small scratch to the cheek. She could not, would not let it show. No emotion could excuse lack of discipline.

It was just like all his other rooms: square walls, open floor made less open by some genuine art and some recreations, now cramped to fit the pretty sprawl of a ship's chambers. Bed against one corner, some mural or poster spread out on the ceiling overlooking it. She couldn't decide whether to scoff or giggle or tear his glowing eyes out at the thought of Mitth'raw'nuruodo having a poster over his cot. She didn't read it, not yet. Do that, she might go a bit too soon.

"Do come in, Underadmiral." Flat, open, impossible to misinterpret. "Share a drink?"

Her eyes went to the small glass in his hand. He'd never drank in front of her before. Or done anything not meant to display contemplation and shrewdness. Yet now, it was like he was asking her to take him less seriously. It pissed a little in her blood, him asking for an ounce of humanity thrown his way! That was mockery if ever there were taunts.

It took her a moment to realize it was a question at all. She had no idea, and when in doubt...

"Yes." _No!_ She'd meant no. But that word and plenty others had escaped her. She did as she'd been taught, hoping to turn it to her advantage. A shared drink in an informal space, that was a gesture towards trust. And before she knew it, he was handing her a second glass of the same liquid. She recoiled a little at the color of it.

Not in horror, but with simple surprise: a holiday present, or a new speeder with some new functions.

"Yes, I am aware. It's a Zabrak drink - _mergjer počji_. I'm glad you recognize it. Food and drink have always been a challenge to get right." He clicked off a holo-emitter in the padded wall, and the pollerscratch obelisk eating at the floorspace fizzled out. He motioned for her to walk where it had once stood.

"Please, sit down. And feel free to trample the greatest achievement of the old Jakkui tribes." If the (nervous?) smirk was any indication, that was supposed to be a joke. He was motioning to the little low-hanging bed against the wall, with its spotless white sheets and the poster overhead. Keeping her eyes low as she could, and still trying to ignore her commanding officer and _sensujlo_ having just made a possibly sincere humorous remark, she saw that it was a flyer for one of the old holos, a colorful piece of classic CIS propaganda. On its cover, two brightly-colored and bulked-up battle droids stood back to back, blasters raised and free arms performing some salute predating even the Trade Federation. No doubt Thrawn knew its name and every ensuing faction's bastardization of its meaning. In crisp Confederate Aurebesh, it read as _"Units Don't Need Names!"_

In four steps she'd planted herself on it, hovering the počji glass at waist level just over the stainless sheets. The commanding officer did not sit, simply paced as if greatly nervous. She saw now the rumples in his white uniform, wrinkled dimples in the chest, the clumsy scratches on the cufflinks, crooked insignia. The age hadn't reached the rank pins on his sleeve just yet. But soon, she could feel that radiating from him. Age, just another word, meaning that place between youth and death. It was upon him now.

There were few old Chiss. The obvious exceptions were those simply 'too Chiss' - in kinder terms, too stubborn - to simply turn over to a sleep clinic and be done for, and too important to die of more natural causes. He was leading the Empire left to him by a very different people. And Tore was to be one of those personally selected as leaders of the Third Imperial Generation.

"Speak freely and without titles, Underadmiral. And take a sip of the Počji, it doesn't take a short while to perfect, especially not this orange blend." He tried to send some signal of smiling. "It'd be a shame to let waste."

Tore nodded.

And her impulse finally seemed to get the best of her.

"I'll keep that in mind. But right now I need answers. What was that back there?"

His own glass seemed to quiver a little in his hand, and his next step was a slower one. Glowing red eyes seemed to wink out for an instant. When they came back, they seemed a little shaken.

He took a single sip, and if she were to believe that little twisting in his face, he hadn't mastered orange mergjer počji after all.

She needed to prove that for herself. And so she took a drink. It was the stuff she'd had as a child - at least, before the tar-black počji of... wherever those places were. _Them_. More tasteless parts of her adolescence. Then Thrawn had found her, in some capacity. Found she and her fast thinking, or something like it.

Plenty more stuff that might as well be irrelevan now. But now the Chiss that had changed her life was losing his edge. Once again, not many old Chiss.

Thrawn replied. No attempt at humor this time, at least. Only statement.

"Necessary. There was no other way."

"Don't say that. You've always had another way - something smart... o-or-or something outsiders would call insane. Ludicrous! You never sent people to pointless slaughter. It has never. Been. Necessary."

His mouth tightened.

He caught on.

"That wing commander was your friend. Wasn't he?"

She nodded. Her hand acted on its own, lifting the počji again to her mouth and letting it flow. She could barely taste the stuff. If anything, she could taste his bitterness riding the liquid, turning it green or brown or some color more like rotted things.

"Let me state this clearly," he began. "Anyone can be killed in a war. Whoever kills more is declared victor. Regardless of their side. Moreover, I don't care that he was your friend, he was a soldier. A tool. Just like you, and just like me."

He downed more of his vile fluid. Stepped closer to her, gazed downward.

"Whatever he is - was - to you, it doesn't matter. When in command, nothing can matter but destruction. Not your friends, not your family, not yourself, not the enemy or anything they might do to you. All is just a step on that ladder. If you can't understand that, you cannot command this Empire."

He'd given speeches in a single breath before. Always about victory, understanding, the values of everything. Never this.

Was this the Thrawn he was only wanting her to see? Quite possibly. But collect enough masks, and you can hide a real face in there anywhere. Lose one, too.

"Do we understand each other, Tore?"

"Ja." Then she added: "Admiral."

The pause held there between them for a moment. From where Tore was standing, the picture frame on the wall opposite her was blending with him, oppressive silhouette of the mythical Krayt dragon blocked by the Blue Man's skull. The aura surrounding it was the same shade of red as his eyes, funny enough. But there were no Mandalorians here to put Thrawn down. Most stayed in disputed space and kept to themselves. Just like she wished she could right now, away from this monster in uniform. He wasn't decrepit, he was maniacal. More dangerous to others.

"Dismissed, Underadmiral. Please leave when you're ready."

Tore's brain was still running on a delay. She didn't hear it. The message bypassed her ears and, by some invisible nudging, dug straight past that into her mind.

She left shortly after, even worse off than she'd entered. As soon as she landed, she found a drainroom and regurgitated the recreation of a drink from her childhood. With it, that illusion of youth and adoption of safety were gone.

The _Pellaeon_ evaded the convoys with room to spare, pierced atmosphere and circled Csilla's largest continent before descending further.

* * *

...

* * *

A/N:

_"I'm of half a mind to do a language profile on Cheunh, just for the absolute heck of it. From what I've read it's got the wildest grammatical and phonological parts of Finnish, Russian, Xhosa and more analytic languages like the East Asian Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese groups. Ludicrous consonant clusters (Russian), really low number of core words (Finnish), absolutely insane phonology (Xhosa), and syntax like little else in the galaxy (Russian and Finnish pragmatic word order, or the more rigid syntax of, say, Japanese)._

_In short, crazy stuff. And unfortunately something just as interesting to me as this weird butchering of Star Wars lore you're reading now. I can only hope you enjoy it, because I sure do!"_

_XÞ_


	15. Gathering: Mirror, Show Me the Force

Rei dreamed again, awaking with a bit more memory of what it was.

It'd been days since she'd arrived here, and each day brought less hope of exploration and greater dissatisfaction with explanations. Luke Skywalker, palace cronies everywhere - even with initial exposure only through nigh-fictional propaganda holos, she knew the type - claimed he was the one who'd destroyed the Death Star, brought down both the Emperor and his enforcer Vader, turned the tide of the Rebellion with his band of merry misfits and criminals. But all she could see was a robed man waving the glow-stick that had brought her closer to death than she'd ever like to be. And who had loaded her broken body up in an X-Wing manned by one like the two she'd lost after Net Station.

She simply laid in bed a while, hoping there was something else today. Not more poor attempts at something she could only guess at, something involving her feelings. Heh. Most of her feelings were things she didn't want much to do with. It was like burning: the only relief was the absence of feeling for her, always had been. And she didn't feel nothing, she felt annoyance. In more pragmatic terms, she observed something like what Jakkui economists called "doija fvou" - "the feeling of happening twice at once." She had left the complex readings to Unkar, a self-proclaimed seer, but now she saw the doija radiating off him in waves, splashing everything around him with the stuff.

Somewhat reluctantly, naked as the day she assumed she was born, she climbed up from the bed assigned to her. With minimal light as she wanted, she maneuvered primarily by the sensations from her arms and feet. Her eyes would adjust, but she wouldn't like what she saw. From here shuffling across the floor she found the bundle she'd laid her clothes in, and...

_Pyijexa!_

They felt different. Running two fingers over the surface of the bundle confirmed a change in texture: softer, more give, no hinting of the spent cyclesuit beneath. Different clothes. Obviously from this place, same stuff Luke wore.

He was consistent, it seemed. The swear subsided into a Jakkui sigh.

(_"He will open. Prepare.")_

It wasn't her voice, or one from the 'Gut' she'd heard speak of on Jakku. Again, it was Mother's voice. She listened as best she could, reaching for the bundle and untying it.

That was when the door opened, and gelden-naran light from outside shot it's way in, exposing the interior of the room to the view of the outside corridor. And who else would stand in the doorway but _him._

Luke didn't care that she was naked, either, that was simply a fact of the situation. He'd come to get her, begin today's training. He'd seen far worse, including the insides of people. Compared to that, the outside was of little importance. Just another layer. She was already getting dressed, he'd told her everything without opening his mouth. With his message delivered, he stepped outside the doorway and waited for her to come out.

Less than a minute later she did, dressed in the paler grey-white shades of the robes he'd given her. Somehow she paled with them, and there was some metallic firmness in her face. How old would she be now, how long since then?

Tatooine's two suns were famous for their aging effects on inhabitants, rendering the young as sad old men hardly out of adulthood. His uncle, how long had it been since he remembered his uncle Owen? Aunt Beru? Their bodies, laid bare like meat to dry under those suns. Old Ben, whose years always escaped Luke, even after becoming one with... It. What was the Jakkui sun like, its incredible magnic pull from two sides of the planet, the day-to-day stresses?

He knew not of their sun, the thing they rightly called Hel. But he knew of how they'd been vaporized, frozen, ripped apart as powerful magnets folded the remains of the planet into one. He'd felt that from every living being as one. He'd had his Alderaan after all this time.

'You're losing thought again." She'd noticed. It seemed harder and harder not to these days.

"Oh?" He kept his voice low as they walked, trying to keep the shuffling of crimson carpeting on feet audible to his human ears.

"Yar, 'tis - "

Luke had to stop her there, holding out an arm in front of her, turning to face the child forced to grow up. He shot a couple looks around the corridor, pointing out the window to Rey's right. If she remembered correctly, that was _Noulr-_true.

"Listen, Rey: people here don't take kindly to Outerbase. That's what the First Order speaks, and if it reaches here, it's like they've won. Do you understand?"

Beat. When she spoke, it was slower than normal, quieter.

"Well enough. Can we get where we're going, Brillgoori?"

"_Shashkaii goldxi smogolo 'bv feiro, Gron-blijattané."_

She'd never heard that one before, but it was clearly a Jakkui tongue. It had Speaking Teedo licked all over it, she could hear that and know it was true. Luke continued in Standard Basic:

"The First Order's too illiterate to learn where their Supreme _L__ekksiker _comes from, apparently."

"What?" Luke resumed his pace.

"Never mind, just keep walking. We have more important things to learn."

"Like?"

"What you can do."

* * *

...

* * *

The training room made Rey almost nauseous. The mats on the floor and slightly angled stripes on the walls reflected horrifyingly into a mirrored ceiling. One door in, same door led out. Spacious enough to feel uncannily like "home," without ever truly being. No source of light she could see, yet everything cast a shadow in some different direction.

On the other side of the room, Luke faced her. By each foot was a small, black, almost _yatser-_shaped cup. His eyes never moved from her, she never saw him blink. She looked down: the same cups, same position around her feet.

There was no sound here. When he spoke, it was like speaking into a cup and having your own voice ring back into your skull. Distorted, tinny, small, tight, muffled save the cutting consonants.

"Pick them up."

She bent first to reach the one on her right.

He moved without sound across the whole floor to meet her, stuck forth a forbidding arm to block the motion.

"What? You ask me to pick it up."

"Not with your hands."

"Then what, my _b__jione_s?"

"You mean to tell me you don't feel it?"

Rey was, of course, confused. And this old brill Luke was, again, speaking yet another language. How is anyone supposed to respond to something like that, except with what they knew? What she knew was what her senses said.

"Feel what? What I _feel_ right now, that's you radiating frustration. And this place is radiating murder like... touch like Jakku."

Luke had to pause at that. Rey looked at the upside-down image of the two of them on the ceiling - shimmering, almost liquid now, and she couldn't say why.

"So you do feel it."

"You don't?"

The old brill needed another moment, she could tell his mind was trying to race, and it was working. The solid image over their heads had adopted something like water, or what she'd seen of such reflective fluids. The image was distorting in waves, pulsing and throbbing like thoughts of a living being.

Luke was somehow connected to it, and that's what this place was: a way to reflect not just images, but thoughts. A place if meditation.

Luke was a warrior monk. Like the old heroes of the Clone Wars turned traitors, the legendary Anakin and Kenobi. And now, it seemed, turned heroic again. That's what Luke was.

And he was trying to teach her his ways.

Trying to force a smile down into a smirk only widens the grin. A little childlike chuckle escaped, and she found herself surprised at that.

"You're a Jedi. You're training me."

Not the whole truth. But, at least, testing her. Seeing what she could do. He'd even said as much earlier. Her smirk settled itself into the usual neutral.

"Train me."

She was only vaguely sure what he could do. In the old holos, Jedi were fast, she had to struggle to follow them even in slow motion replays, the awkwardly dramatic ones meant to convey power. Their blades were fiery and could cut cleanly through anything they touched. They could manipulate objects with their thoughts. She'd felt Luke keeping her body from crossing her into the river, that's what it was.

Luke nodded. A nod did mean here what it did on her late homeworld, yar?

"Then pick it up."

"I can't."

"You feel the cup there?" Rey nodded. "Then speak to it. It'll listen, and it's open to suggestion." She had to point, knowing what she'd heard and not understanding fully.

"That cup 'tis?" Luke nodded.

"If you can speak to it, and you can listen, everything that is will offer you help. Do you know what that's called?"

She shook her head. She might've heard something like it before, but knew his answer would be different. Over their heads, the mirrored surface was hardly a flat surface, it was a perfectly reflective fluid bending, rippling, forming a simple over the head of the older brill. Her presence on that surface could only be described as... well, touch different. Neither weaker nor stronger, more registering to her as a texture it seemed the thing couldn't fully compute.

"We call it the Force. It's the network that keeps this universe together. Some living things can do what I described: talking and listening to all of it. That's how..." He raised a gloved hand, twitched his fingers ever so slightly, and raised the cup at her side, along with his own. Their presences represented new dimples in the ceiling that Rey could see. Was that what it was - an indicator, monitor? Mirror of something the oyo could not see?

The angled stripes on the walls twisted. She took a step to her left, and the reflections moved. Shadows, too. Two steps right, changed again. She returned to the center and watched the cups go.

They rose to eye level, then closed towards one another, picking up speed until they collided. With a hollow and anticlimactic _clink_ they both clattered to the ground. Rolled in perfect parallel away from one another, back to their respective owners.

Rey watched as Luke must've told both cups to stand themselves upright again. The one to the left foot of each person was standing on end now.

"So I can do that, too?"

Luke's hand went slack, and the black cans dropped to a more stable state.

He looked up at her register on that strange liquid ceiling. She could make out the warped blob of her own reflection, slowly realized why it looked so odd:

It wasn't a dimple reaching upward. It was a stalactite, a mound reaching down from the ceiling to her. She pointed to it.

"How ds'that mean?"

"It's broken. It wasn't the last time I was in here."

"You're lying." He shook his head.

"You broke it. You've - ..."

_[... - done that before.]_

He trailed off. She saw the weapon again on his belt, the robes. She had those robes, just not that belt: a hilt for the silver handle dangling on his right side. The kind like the one on the holos, used by Skywalker and Kenobi. And by the two on Jakku. One who'd hunted her, the other who'd let her go free.

"When do I handle a glo-stick like yon on that belt?"

He motioned with his gloved hand and the ceiling froze, flattened out. Her reflection was proper again. Those damned perfect slanted stripes were back.

"When you're ready. But we're done here."


	16. Gathering: We Interrupt This Program

Pronunciation guide:

Oxičti: okh-EECH-tee

Torz'rðo: Torz-er-THO

Gol'rðo: Gul-er-THO

Torz'gol: Torz-GOLL

Tolle Rheu: Toll Hroo

Now, a dictionary:

Grasthiolle: First Order equivalent of "thank you" or Spanish "gracias" (pronounced grathias in Spain)

Athul: Blue (Spanish "azul," pronounced athul in Spain)

Ern: one. Nothing really special about it.

Xorshe(n): First Order for "fine" or Russian "хорошо" (khorosho)

Obviously, this is because the First Order takes its language from real-world dictatorships like Francoist Spain and the USSR. Might do a language and history profile attached to a later chapter because boredom.

Seriously. I want to hear more from y'all, rather than just my one loyal reviewer. This is a story I want to tell, but it can always be improved. And sure, you can sit through my ad-lib linguistics lectures and promises of more fictional meat, but I can't do anything without help. Please

Anyway, let me shut up and make my return. Enjoy!

: Þ

* * *

The First Order was not a small affair. Starkiller was its heart, yet their reach extended and was growing daily.

On the edges of such a system, something greatly nameless and sparse save one world, a traitor was being hunted.

On Oxičti, Gollen-LokkenCast was a HoloNet station, much like that on Jakku, using its planet's strong magnetic field to boost its own signal across a region of space. It had always been loyal, gladly receiving tapes and transmissions and redistributing daring stories of perfect soldiers, the pure and loyal Hero Without a Face standing vigilant in the face of dangerous subhumans and traitors. Loyalty to the shining face of His Supremacy was the most heroic trait of all, the Father above Fathers personally congratulating that Faceless Hero for his efforts.

These tapes arrived, they would be edited, and the Gollen-Lokken studio was permitted to hire and even conscript actors as needed for the sake of drama. The Rodian family who had run the studio since the days of the Old Republic sometimes played the Traitorous Alien or the Slimy Criminal themselves, one teenaged male being impressively happy with the role of the Unleashed Alien Child for the hero to mercy-kill after his corruption became obvious, and he would never return to working under a human. When First Order officials occasionally checked on the station, he would re-enact these live for them, smiling and joking with his human acting companion, always eager to please.

When news inevitably spread of Jakku's demise, the family who had been content to keep to simply air the programmes turned to more ambiguous storytelling, their most recent offense being a short about the Hero Without a Face removing his sacred Terry staller and visil to reveal to his underling troops that he was an alien. Gol'rðo, the current station manager and the boy's father, had argued this was to encourage Order loyalty among nonhumans, but media specialists had declared the short was simply too subversive.

They must be removed. Let the people go without some entertainment for a few days, and gladly wolf down what was broadcast from the next studio. Perhaps they would capture one of the Republic's studio-stations, maybe even be bold and bravely take one back from the Imitation Empire, that Xeno-loving junta of Brillblues and aristocrats bastardizing the Old Empire, the lesser successor.

Two carriers and a TIE Silencer dropped from hyperspace over the planet, syncing their orbit and positioning themselves to drop over the equator and approach the Noulr-pole under the friction of atmosphere. Anything less, and their ships would be pulled in from space and burn up when the atmosphere disagreed with terminal velocity.

The winds were strong, but better winds than magnic pull. Today was a stormy day up to the Noulr, too. Citizens watched with excitement and ever-growing anxiety as the trio of Order ships shot overhead, understanding roughly what for. They could only guess what was aboard: some First Order troops not yet earning the anonymity of the Terror Trooper, some Terrors, their respective pilots and assisting droids.

The Silencer, none had a clue. It looked kind of like a Hexect, moreso like the Old Imperial TIE Interceptor. Had it flown any lower and slower, the identifying mark of an Inner Spire could be seen, distinguishing this as a high-ranking member of the Order, a military leader.

Or a Knight of Ren, had the First Order public known of such things. They were rather like ghosts, in the same way every Terror Trooper wearing Darth Vader's face was a wraith, capitalizing on old fears. And yar, that was the face. They would not be surprised to see what was in the Silencer's cockpit.

* * *

Gol'rðo had gotten a message from an astronomy associate warning him of the approaching ships. That he was to act naturally and obediently, all of which he knew. His wife Torz'rðo knew, as did their little acting hopeful Torz'gol. When the First Order arrived they would "play it cool" as they said in the Republic, go along with everything and do nothing to suggest subversion. Burn their Rebellion tapes, use the word "Supreme" whenever possible, address them by a Higher honorific, none of that damned Xenoloan lekksiker. Most First Order worlds were already diglossic in that sense whenever the military got involved.

The three Rodians excused their staff for the day, insisting they leave their equipment as is and return to deal with it the following morning - if any of it was left. They stood outside, waiting attentively for the First Order to arrive. Truth be told, it was a wonder this hadn't happened sooner.

"_Papjad_, why now? Was it The Reveal?" Torz'Gol kept his eyes to the Solt, where they knew the ships would come from.

"Likely," his father answered. "They're even more fickle than we thought." He chuckled. "I mean, they let that last one slide, that Clone Wars-era one." He couldn't chuckle again, not without losing what breath he had left. A Rodian's diaphragm often spasms in periods of panic, much like the human heart racing. In theory, air is quicker in intake and expulsion, but it was painful and dangerous when standing still. Thousands of years away from the great dangerous swamps of Rodia, and still they could not evolve past this, often taking medication and personal training to avoid panic.

He coughed with half a breath. Torz'rðo breathed deeply, trying to fight that same feeling. She couldn't panic, not in front of her son.

They didn't wait long. The trio of ships were on the horizon now, zooming in fast. The Rodian man gripped his son's shoulder.

"Papjad, that hurts." He hadn't realized it. Sorrowfully, he removed the hand from his son.

The Silencer decelerated, in perfect sync with the escorts. Gol'rðo even heard the switch in engines as they approached, their engines being "clamped down" to negate the magnic effects of the pole. Just seeing it reminded the Rodian of the ringing in his teeth. Funny how even nonmetals still resonated, or something more nuanced only an expert scientist could understand.

The land before them was mostly an empty stretch, a touch colder than the rest of the world, and flatter. Most of what grew was short and stubborn, a greyed-out kind of grass and moss. It sank visibly under the weight of three ships, and he must've imagined the deep squelching noise they made - had Torz'rðo and Torz'Gol not heard it too.

The Silencer did not move. The two carriers opened wide, and the Rodian family stiffened out of fear. With any luck, the Order would see that fear and be satisfied. Sadly, nothing goes that way.

Several officers in those hats needing restraint to avoid laughing. If they laughed, the blasters came out.

Grey uniforms, black uniforms, several variations of the Hex and Spires insignia. Following them were the Terror Troopers, the ones wearing Vader's face. No rank markers, no distinction of any kind. Same height, same build, same stance, step size. Like clones.

A black uniform approached them. Strong human jawline, beak occupying half the face, buggy eyes fitting of a so-called inferior form.

"Rodians. You running this station?"

Gol'rðo nodded. The officer - no telling what the insignias meant these days - was not shy about stepping close, breathing on them, letting some of that disgust shine through.

"Ah, _x__orshen_. You've done great service to the First Order, you know. We simply cannot overlook that, yet..." He squatted to Torz'Gol's level, held out a gloved hand to straighten a flap on the boy's jacket.

"You've been playing some of both sides, haven't you." The gloved hand went to the boy's arm. The grip was not overly tight.

In the background, the Terror Troopers chatted in scrambled tones amongst themselves.

"Nar'n intentionally, sire," the patriarch replied. "Only what's _Supremely _relevant, what we believe the citizenry need to hear. Anything is someone else's interpretation. Sire."

A small smile creeped across his face. Facing the boy, he tightened his grip ever so slightly.

"I think I recognize this one: you're that brillyouth from The Reveal. Quite the _aktorxorshe_ you'll make, play your dealings right."

Torz'Gol was slow to reply - the officer's claw dug like his Papjad's had, and tightened still. His eyes were going wide.

"Y-yar, sire. G-g-_Grasthiolle,_ sire!"

He removed the hand in an instant, smiling with something like sincerity. His denters, human though he would claim to be, were pointed. Zabraks had fangs. Monsters and flesh-eaters had fangs.

The officer stood up.

"We would like to see inside your station. Any resistance will be... noted."

"Unders-st-tt-stood, sire," Torz'rðo stammered. "R-right this way-ay, s-sir-sire."

He broke from his family, escorting the officer back under the blocky roof Gollen-LokkenCast.

The Terrors were assembling a perimeter, spreading out in some rough circular shape around the station, alternating between facing out and facing in. Their long-barreled blasters hummed.

One of them gazed down at Torz'Gol, daring him to try anything, any excuse to end his acting career and his life. In moving his oyos to the ground, he passed a hilt on the soldier's belt.

Of course...

Normal blasters get a bit thrown off by strong magnic interference. What this could mean for later, neither mother nor child could tell just yet. Only hope that if they should run, they would not be cut down by pursuit.

* * *

Torz'rðo had been smart to leave every door open, or so he believed. He walked down the corridor and gestured to the main studio straight down that way.

"Why is every door open? The winds here cannot be kind."

"Oh, sire, we heard you were coming and - " He should not have said that. The officer threw out a hand, stopping both where they stood.

"You _heard we were coming._"

Too late to correct it now. His friend was already dead. He could feel that thing in his stomach tightening again, begging him to run, begging him to set himself free! But nar. He would stand here and choke if his diaphragm kept going, or worse actually run.

"Yar, sire. An..." He briefly doubled over and clutched his stomach, gasped for air and resumed. "Down by the Equather, he - " Gasp, gulp. "His name's... Tolle Rheu. Fine-machining shopper called... Krevo and Kears, name written in yon _ern_ ancient font."

The officer wrote no notes, merely a lifting of a brow.

Then he shrugged and kept walking.

"What, sire? Nothing of it?"

"Nothing of note. We encourage integration, after all. And if I must ever repair an Oxičtiam timetell, I will thank him personally for aid in your assimilation. Now, tell me more about your recent holofilm projects."

"Oh, err, not much of note, sire. Usual projects: tales of brave units, interspecies relations, hierarchies, simple might... and inferiority."

The officer grunted agreeingly in reply, urging him to continue. If he kept talking themes and narratives his lungs could not take it. He sucked air and moved into the technical side.

"We're experimenting with resolutions, color clarity, shades of athul in the final airing. But we still shoot in color because to the average oyo it always makes a difference, sire. Ern can always tell, yar, ern can."

"Yar, indeed."

Drop. His time was up.

Yells, blasterfire outside. Thick, heavy bolts clanging against surfaces, mixing with screams. Totally disconnected from them.

His hideous buggy oyos went wider; he choked and fell in an instant.

The officer watched the life drain from him, and casually helped him along with a boot to the throat. His eyes went wide and what consciousness aliens are alleged to possess finally abandoned him. He gurgled and toxic-colored drool was free from his _bocker_ at last.

"Serves you right," the officer mumbled. "Stepping out of line."

He went outside.

* * *

All dead. Save one.

He fell to a lightsaber. His Supremacy had decided they would not concede another propaganda machine so sloppily, in just plain view. They would simply... cease to exist.

The Silencer took its leave, wiping out the station, the carrier, the fresh bodies of human and Rodian. Then broke atmosphere and went to lightspeed without fuss.


	17. Gathering: Dakka, Under, Evil, Rose

Poe, Finn, Unkar, Wiles, Beebee, the Teedos. Six of them. After hiring the Hosnian rig and changing it out several times in between short hyperspace zigzags they'd become a crew. And on each trip they'd only gotten food and fuel money by transporting something as they went. One-time jobs with slimy people not even the all-knowing Unkar could recall. Nor did he want to. At least one, he was certain, had blasted the last boss and taken his place less than a week ago.

From Hosnian they'd gone spinward to an outpost half a system from Corellia. While there, Unkar took a shuttle and disappeared for a day or two, then returned and said nothing. Wiles advised both the humans not to ask about it; he would say something only if he needed to. His connections and his door-opening crystal _yamulyer_ were his secrets, and he would employ all of them.

The station had switched out their ships and instructed them to change as many identifying markers as they could: its Aurebesh serial number would be scratched off and redone in the Ubese abugida. Too many prominent but unintelligible languages makes for easy disguise, and the best part was no language institution reported to another, as was the norm. The Teedos must've giggled when writing "Tsiort yub m'mat dvwoi" in place of that serial number.

After the final generic logo was finished and their new cargo - two tonnes of explosive crystals - was loaded, they cast off and punched in their next destination. Unkar simply dictated coordinates and off they went. Destination: Coruscant. The starry stripes of a hyperspace tunnel gasped and swallowed them.

The repetitive jump still tugged at something in Poe's stomach, made him sick. He doubled over in his seat and reached for The Bucket: a little souvenir from the Hosnian _doell-dokter_s. He dropped and brought it to his lap, hunched forward and ready to hurl. Dry-retched. Something clearly hadn't been sewn in correctly, and that was still a nuisance of the most Supreme Order.

It was not Finn who was at his side in the cargo hold first. It was Wiles, two trusty-enough rags in one outer hand each, the middle arm (sleeved, a mystery he was reluctant to investigate) holding yet another new medical trinket he couldn't recognize.

"Does it hurt in the same area as before?"

Poe groaned.

"That question's rhetorical by now. Like old notches _perkenner_ on my insides, y'know? A speedometer p'ken tracking our hyperspeed."

"It is not uncommon, you know. Injuries can often have... useful side effects."

"I'm sure. Make sure the next dokter to take a cleaver to my guts leaves scabs in the shape of a pressure gauge."

Poe took one of the rags and shoved it into his forehead, groaning. A little damp cloth wouldn't cure him, but his skull no longer felt like it was melting.

"Get some sleep. I'm sure you haven't ingested **all** of our sedatives yet."

It was futile, but it was a good idea. It wasn't like they'd drop out of the lane any time soon, not for a long time.

He drifted off.

* * *

He awoke again the instant they emerged from the lane into realspace, just outside Coruscanti gravity. It was like a weight had been lifted from his chest, and a new one dropped in its place. His head throbbed, and he fell completely from his chair, left arm landing on The Bucket in such a way that the limb went numb. He groaned.

Finn greeted him this time.

"Poe."

"We're here."

"Yeah, we are. Unkar says we have a problem." The brill on the floor shook out his dead arm and struggled to his feet.

"How so?"

Even his fellow First Order deserter looked at him like he was stupid.

"We're in the middle of Republic territory. Not even in the middle, we're getting on their capital planet." He had failed to consider that. He could hardly remember that, his head hurt too much to seriously consider it.

"Right. But what's the problem? We've switched out dummy credentials at least twice, switched ships just as often, and we're here doing services for powerful people. I'm not seeing the problem."

Finn pulled him in a little closer, as if he were afraid their crewmates would hear. They were an actual crew now, a team. Of sorts.

"We can't land. Not without someone who'll take us, and our boss apparently took this job knowing this would happen. We're transporting cargo, yeah, but we have to do that without help from the local muscle. That means we aren't lined up to park somewhere, the way we have been."

"That means we need to find a place." Finn nodded. "We need to hide somewhere, deliver our goods and figure out what happens next."

He took Finn's hand in a gesture outlawed among the worlds of the Order.

"We can do that, right?" Finn nodded again.

"Right."

...

Again. He didn't know how much time had passed when he felt the ship lurch a final time, then stop dead. Four times in that span, a Teedo had come in and whacked at the crystal container with a wrench, then promptly left in a fit of cackles.

"Yo, bri? What's happening out there?"

"Landed," Unkar replied from the cockpit behind the door to his left in the cargo hold. "We might have a spot."

"_Khorosher_, because if not, then..."

"We know. Instinct says it's a steal."

"Just instinct?"

Unkar did not answer. Instead, he got up, reaching over his own heavy belly into his belt with a flexibility unbecoming his stockiness. He did not raise his eyes to meet Poe in the entire he wrapped something around his hand, flexed to test the fit.

Poe wanted to grin. But it hurt too much, and he felt another hurl coming on.

* * *

...

* * *

Unkar disembarked over the shop in question. Parking in a space this crowded was illegal without a portfolio of permits, mostly for the practical reason of not having the surface area for it. Last time he was here, all those years ago, he'd been arrested three times in a business day. He'd heard from his repeat cellmates that he'd been let off easy, they could've planted something more incriminating on him, or else actually searched his rig. He doubted they'd find anything worthwhile, but an even fatter Twi'Lek than him with only one taillobe - on his left side - had said "they always find something."

A descent line dropped, and he skimmed down on a riding glove. To put it lightly, he was a sturdy brill, but the roof was sturdier, and it held him. After that, he tugged twice on the line, and it retracted. Though they could not see him and did not need to, he waved them off with a brush of his arm, they listed right and zoomed off for somewhere they could loiter a while. He ripped the already-shredded cloth from his other hand, placed it away in his belt to be sewn up again later.

Meanwhile, his next step was examining his environment, and making his demands. He looked down, almost far enough to look over his belly at his blocky feet. Rough metal tiles, most of them visibly corroded by toxic vapor trails from overhead. Two speeders - one pursuing the other, likely for an unpaid debt or stolen holochip - rained noxious gases down on him, and he knew he was correct. He winced, never forgetting how loud a juiced-up engine could be when it was blasting you in the face.

He knelt and rapped four times on the tile. Waited. In the meantime, he wiped away gunk from his blubbery skin. It might've been flammable. Not that that bothered him, he and heat had something of an understanding.

Counted ten breaths, rapped again. It was loud here, he wondered how well the person inside could hear. He placed his head so that his thick ear grazed the filthy tile. He could feel and hear a hum from inside. He counted the ins and outs of his _rispret._

Seven breaths, and he heard the first rap back.

"Whoever's up there, tell me what I need to hear or I hit the alarm. You'll have a dozen Whites hauling your _cagger_ to solitary before you can scramble down." A human woman's voice, he thought. That was the bocker of someone whose great-great-great-grandparents had settled in this dump of a province and never moved, native in a way enforced by the generations. This had to be the right place.

He'd been slipped a codeword during his last meeting with the local crime boss. He mentally scrambled for it, and then for a way to drop it into a sentence as ordered.

"No two words like diction and _dakka_ in this world," he enunciated thickly, with volume.

He returned to counting his breaths. An artificial wind slapped at sweaty, blubbery skin. He did not open his nostrils to smell it, and he didn't want to taste its burning sick-sweetness for much longer.

One breath. In and out.

Two breaths. In, out.

Three breaths. In, out.

He didn't hear the fourth, someone crashed several blocks away and several more overhead, and the explosion lasted through his fifth breath.

By the sixth breath, someone had already activated a siren.

Seven. In, out.

Eight. In...

Somewhere to his right, a hole opened in the roof. It seemed the mismatch of tiles hid a trapdoor and ladder well.

It was a black-haired woman - the one whose voice he'd heard - in a greasy and slightly ripped mechanic's uniform. She came up just enough to rest her padded elbows on the roof. She had to be young, or whatever humans considered young. Not much older than Rey, and even trying to guess her age was a stretch, despite all the years since he'd pulled her out of that wreckage. She'd been so broken then, physically and mentally. She should not have been alive, but while he could still make a use of her...

"Hey! I know you didn't just materialize over there. How far away's your rig?" His head snapped up.

"_Yar,_ _tacked_. Not far, ken samm'n 'em et moment's notice."

He stood up, held one hand to his neck to hold the athul kyber yamulyer out where she could see it. She seemed confused.

"What's that mean to me?"

"Th'sis kyber."

"So? Means nothing. Just a funny rock tied to some lying gag." He wondered briefly if their deal was off now, the way she spoke was hostile.

But she picked up a hand to wave him in.

"Not to worry, you checked out the second you gave me the password. Get your cagger in here, we'll figure the rest out in some moments."

* * *

Climbing down was not tricky; he was, after all, quite flexible. He also had a comm in his belt, which he pulled out when he gave the all-khor to the rest of the crew to circle back. Legal and public lanes only, nothing where the rest of the planet couldn't see them. Because that's where the White Masks will be waiting, or else someone who doesn't pretend to enforce any law. But above all, do not drop to a lower urban sublevel where no Hellight could reach. That was a death sentence.

He looked around the mechanic's shop while he waited for them to arrive, which would take some time. He was also pleased to hear that the three passengers were still pulling their weight, even the injured one, whom he congratulated for surviving a doell-doktering.

The place seemed to be kept busy, though there were no customers in-house. But two speeders, a bike and half a podracer all had whole diagnostic pits to themselves, all hooked up to read-cables, two Mutant droids making their rounds between each broken piece of equipment. All worked silently; none had their own voxbox - Basic, droidspeak or otherwise. The human in the shop did enough talking for the three of them without prompt.

"Good call, to steer them away from the Unders. Will say, though, a body from below turns up on this block every few days, almost always marked with some graff on the nearest body-sized surface, sometimes on the _cadtavren_ themselves. It's how the rival untergangs talk to one another, no one who's seen sunlight can make sense of the stuff writ."

"Masks still as blind as ever?"

"Hey, I stay in business by paying tax and a little extra. Downright evil system, but it's been the system since there was a system." He kept quiet at her mention of Evil, convinced she thought she could comprehend what Evil really was. He was touchy about that. Of course, he wondered how many customers had heard the same log.

"Ye're also quite the hand et t'expository. Get loads of exotics, I reck'n."

"Not much else to do but talk, especially when my only two employees over there happen to be voxless. I did have my..." She stopped herself sharply at that. He would not pursue it further.

"Got a name, et least?"

"Yeah, I do. Rose Tico. Not nice to meet you, but I'll be at your service... And you'll be at mine."


End file.
